The daytime bird equivalent to a bat!

It’s a breathtaking wildlife encounter to stand on a busy London street & watch swifts swooping high above the city. Their sickle-shaped wings, big eyes, and wide mouth are adapted for aerial life. This truly wild bird sleeps, mates, feeds & drinks on the wing – flying as high as 10,000ft, shutting down half their brain, and correcting wind drift while sleeping.

They depend on humans for nest sites, but with new buildings lacking such spaces, the answer is swift bricks. [link to https://www.actionforswifts.com/] Adults carry ‘meatballs’ of up to 1000 compacted small prey species back to their chicks! They feed on flying ants, Aphid, mosquitoes, and spiderlings – up to 20,000 a day – but their largest prey are Marmalade Hoverfly.

Swifts share an ecological niche with Common Pipistrelle Bat – they do the day shift, eating aerial prey while the bats sleep. Other swift species even use echolocation, enabling them to find things in the dark as bats do.