The White-throated Needletail (Hirundapus caudacutus), or Needle-tailed Swift, is a large swift.
These birds have very short legs which they use only for clinging to vertical surfaces. They never settle voluntarily on the ground and spend most of their lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in their beaks.
These swifts breeds in rocky hills in central Asia and southern Siberia. This species is migratory, wintering south to Australia. It is a rare vagrant in western Europe, but has been recorded as far west as Norway, Sweden and Great Britain.
These swifts build their nests in rock crevices in cliffs or hollow trees. The flight is impressively fast, even compared to other swifts.
The White-throated Needletail is a large bird, similar in size to Alpine Swift, but a quite different build, with a heavier barrel-like body. They are black except for a white throat, white undertail, which extends on to the flanks, and a somewhat paler brown back.
The Hirundapus needletailed swifts get their name from the spiny end to the tail, which is not forked as in the Apus typical swifts.
The Common Swift (Apus apus) is a small bird, superficially similar to the swallow or house martin.
The heraldic bird known as the "martlet[?]", which is represented without feet and may have been based on the swift, was used for the arms of younger sons, perhaps because it symbolized their landless wandering.
Swifts will occasionally live in forests, but they have adapted more commonly to human sites and will build their nests under window sills, in the corner rafters of wooden buildings, in chimneys, and in smokestacks.
The swifts are birds superficially similar to swallows but are actually not closely related to those passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they formerly shared with the hummingbirds.
The resemblances between the swifts and swallows are due to convergent evolution reflecting similar life styles based on catching insects in flight.
Swifts are the most aerial of birds and some, like the Common Swift, even sleep and mate on the wing.
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