Swift (bird)
family of birds
The Apodidae, or swifts, form a family of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows but are not closely related to any passerine species. Swifts are placed in the order Apodiformes along with hummingbirds. The treeswifts are closely related to the true swifts but form a separate family, the Hemiprocnidae.
Resemblances between swifts and swallows are due to convergent evolution, reflecting similar life styles based on catching insects in flight.
The family name, Apodidae, is derived from the Greek ἄπους (ápous), meaning "footless", a reference to the small, weak legs of these most aerial of birds. The tradition of depicting swifts without feet continued into the Middle Ages, as seen in the heraldic martlet.
Taxonomy
Taxonomists have long classified swifts and treeswifts as relatives of the hummingbirds, a judgment corroborated by the discovery of the Jungornithidae (apparently swift-like hummingbird-relatives) and of primitive hummingbirds such as Eurotrochilus. Traditional taxonomies place the hummingbird family (Trochilidae) in the same order as the swifts and treeswifts (and no other birds); the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy treated this group as a superorder in which the swift order was called Trochiliformes.
The taxonomy of the swifts is complicated, with genus and species boundaries widely disputed, especially amongst the swiftlets.
“Swift (bird)” enters the record as family of birds. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Swift, bird and family can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Swift (bird)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.