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Image: Davide D’Amico
Under ideal conditions, common swifts can cover more than 500 miles per day for more than a week, report scientists. Seems like an unimaginable feat for such a tiny bird, but swifts have adopted a clever strategy that makes these epic migrations possible.
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As a migrating bird, common swifts (
Apus apus) are aptly named. These highly mobile creatures spend more than 80% of their lives in the air when not in breeding mode, and a good portion of this time is spent migrating from northern Scandinavia to their wintering destinations in western and central Africa.
For these long-distance migrations, scientists had previously estimated average speeds of 310 miles per day (500 km/day), but new research published in iScience has updated this figure to 354 miles (570 km/day). More impressively not that this isn’t impressive enough the new study shows that swifts can travel farther and faster than previously thought. At their fastest, swifts can cove