They differ from the other swifts in that they have crests, long forked tails and softer plumage. The males have iridescent mantle plumage.
These are birds of open woodland which, like all swifts, have life styles based on catching insects in flight. They lay one grey egg in the nest, which is glued to an open tree branch.
The swifts are birds superficially similar to swallows but are completely unrelated to those passerine species; 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.
Tree fern (Bot.), an arborescent fern having a straight trunk, sometimes twenty or twenty-five feet high, or even higher, and bearing a cluster of fronds at the top.
Tree hopper (Zo["o]l.), any one of numerous species of small leaping hemipterous insects which live chiefly on the branches and twigs of trees, and injure them by sucking the sap.
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