apodiform

▪ bird

Introduction

  any member of one of two groups of birds (bird), the swifts (swift) and the hummingbirds (hummingbird), that are very different from one another in general appearance and way of life. The two groups, considered suborders, are the Apodi, which contains the families Hemiprocnidae for the tree swifts (also called crested swifts (crested swift)) and Apodidae for the true swifts; and the Trochili, which contains the single large family Trochilidae for the hummingbirds. The most obvious common characteristic of the two groups is a superb mastery of the air; both swifts and hummingbirds are agile fliers and share, in this connection, some peculiarities of wing structure. Some ornithologists believe that these anatomical resemblances are convergent (the result of the same type of natural selection acting on unrelated organisms) and that the true relationships of hummingbirds and swifts lie with other groups, not with each other.

General features

Importance to humans

      Humans have long been fascinated by hummingbirds (hummingbird). From the time the first specimens arrived in Europe from the newly discovered American tropics, the brilliant, iridescent colours and diminutive size of hummingbirds made them favourites of both scientists and the public. Stuffed hummingbirds were in great demand for display in homes and museums and for decorating ladies' hats. South American Indians brought hummingbirds from hundreds of miles around to great market centres such as Bogotá, Colombia, and Cayenne, French Guiana. Even today some species and subspecies of hummingbirds are known only from these “trade skins,” and their actual range has never been discovered by ornithologists. The commerce in hummingbird skins has almost completely vanished, and collectors now capture hummingbirds alive for exhibition in zoos and aviaries. Although some species are surprisingly hardy in captivity, the proper care of hummingbirds is not simple, and few of the birds (bird) that leave the jungle survive.

      Swifts (swift), little known to the average person, are in most parts of the world often confused with swallows (swallow), which are unrelated but generally similar to swifts in size, proportions, and aerial habits. In Southeast Asia, however, one group of swifts is of major economic importance. The swiftlets (swiftlet) of the genus Collocalia comprise a group of species, most of which live in caves. They build nests (nest) composed of varying amounts of plant and animal substances (such as leaves, moss, hair, feathers (feather)) held together and fastened to the cave wall with a mucilaginous secretion of the salivary glands (salivary gland). The nest of one species, the edible-nest swiftlet (C. fuciphaga), is composed almost entirely of concentric layers of this salivary cement. These nests and, to a lesser extent, those of some other swiftlets are gathered commercially in the East Indies and form the base for the famous bird's-nest soup of the Orient.

Size range and diversity of structure

 The smallest of living birds are included among the Trochilidae, the smallest known species being the bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) of Cuba, which is barely 62 mm (about 2.5 inches) from bill tip to tail tip. Even the largest member of the family, the giant hummingbird (Patagona gigas) of western South America, has a body only about the size of a large sparrow, although the bill and tail extend this length by about 35 and 85 mm (1.4 and 3.3 inches), respectively. There is relatively little structural diversity among hummingbirds except in the size and shape of the bill (beak) and the ornamental feathers (feather). The bill may be very short or, as in the sword-billed hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera) of the Andes, may exceed the rest of the bird in length. The bill may also be straight or curved to varying degrees, usually downward, but, in a few species, upward. In most hummingbirds, the tail feathers are relatively unspecialized. However, in some they are greatly elongated and are either straight or curved, and in others the tail feathers are wirelike with spatulate tips. Brilliantly iridescent feathers are found somewhere on the body of most hummingbirds, often with an especially colourful gorget on the throat; a few genera have dull coloration. Sexual dimorphism (that is, the structural difference between sexes) varies between species, females being either indistinguishable from males or less colourful or ornate.

 The true swifts have a somewhat greater size range; such tiny species as the pigmy swiftlet (Collocalia troglodytes) of the Philippines weighs only 5 grams (0.2 ounce), whereas some of the large and powerful members of the Old World genus Apus are 30 times heavier. Beyond the size differences, the most obvious morphological variation among swifts is in the conformation of the tail. In the spine-tailed swifts, a group that includes the familiar American chimney swift (Chaetura pelagica), the central shaft of the tail feathers extend beyond the vanes (the soft, flat, expanded parts of a feather) into pointed spines. In other swifts, with less specialized tail feathers, the tail itself may be square-ended, moderately forked, or deeply forked (swallow-tailed). Less conspicuous structural variations that are used in swift taxonomy include the position of the toes and the amount of feathering on the legs. The four species of tree swifts that make up the family Hemiprocnidae are rather uniform, differing mainly in size, proportions, and plumage pattern.

Distribution and abundance

      Although there are unrelated Old World birds, such as the sunbirds (sunbird) (Nectariniidae), that superficially resemble hummingbirds, the family Trochilidae is confined entirely to the Americas. Of approximately 320 known species, most are tropical, and the greatest numbers of these are found in northwestern South America (Colombia and Ecuador). Several species have become adapted to temperate conditions, some by having extended their distributions north or south of the tropics, others by their occupation of high-altitude habitats in South and Central America. In North America only one species, the ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), is normally found east of the Great Plains. About a dozen occur regularly in the western United States; one, the rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus), reaches southern Alaska.

      The family Hemiprocnidae is confined to Asia and several Pacific islands, from India south and east through the East Indies, with one species reaching as far as the Solomon Islands. The Apodidae are much more widely distributed, occurring in both the Old and the New World. There are approximately 70 to 80 species, but the features that distinguish closely related species are often so subtle that there is little agreement about swift classification at either the genus or species level. Virtually nothing is known about some species other than their existence as evidenced by museum specimens; such birds may be rare, shy, or both. Others, such as the chimney swift, the European swift (Apus apus), and the house swift (Apus affinis) of India, are familiar inhabitants of towns and have been extensively studied by biologists.

Natural history

Behaviour and locomotion

 In such overwhelmingly aerial birds (bird) as swifts (swift) and hummingbirds (hummingbird), locomotion is an inseparable part of behaviour. Although both groups depend on their flying ability to obtain food, the actual feeding methods are quite different. Swifts feed exclusively on flying insects, sharing with the unrelated swallows (swallow) several morphological adaptations for this habit (such as the short, weak bill, large mouth, and long, narrow wings). The feet of the true swifts are much weaker in proportion to body size than are those of swallows or hummingbirds, and the former are unable to perch on twigs, wires, or other similar landing places. In their normal resting posture, the true swifts cling to vertical surfaces except when sitting on the nest. The tree swifts are somewhat less specialized and are fully capable of perching; in fact, their usual foraging method involves launching after flying prey from the vantage point of a high perch. Swifts drink by swooping down at the surface of a body of water, and nesting material may be picked in midair, as in the case of drifting feathers (feather) or plant material, or snatched in full flight, as are dead twigs and grass stems. Most courtship displays that have been described for swifts are wholly aerial, and copulation is known to take place in full flight.

      Some species of swiftlets (swiftlet) (Collocalia) that nest in total darkness deep in caves have the ability to orient themselves in flight by echolocation (reflection of sound waves back to the emitter), a phenomenon otherwise known, among birds, only in the oilbird (Steatornis caripensis, of the order Caprimulgiformes (caprimulgiform)). The swiftlets emit a rattling call consisting of a succession of clicks, which, unlike the calls used by bats for the same purpose, are fully audible to the human ear. A few species of swiftlets lack this ability and nest only where some light penetrates the caves.

      Hummingbirds are less constantly aerial than swifts and often spend long periods quietly perched. In foraging, however, most species depend upon their unique ability to dash from place to place and then to hover, motionless except for beating wings (wing) and darting tongue. They can even fly backward or upside down for short distances. The basic food is flower nectar, and the shapes of hummingbird bills are sometimes closely correlated with the shapes of the flowers from which they feed. The long, tubular tongue serves also for sucking up dew or rainwater as needed. Hummingbirds also eat small insects and spiders, which usually appear to be captured with the bill rather than with the tongue. Although hummingbirds perch, they share with swifts the lack of walking ability or other nonflying locomotion. They may sometimes sidle on a perch, just as swifts may crawl up a wall, but normal locomotion is by flying, even for short distances.

      Pre-nesting behaviour, or courtship, is varied in hummingbirds. Territoriality is completely absent in some species, but others fiercely defend nesting or feeding territories. Hummingbirds in general tend to be aggressive and may attack vastly larger potential predators, such as crows (crow) and hawks (hawk). Leks (lek), areas of communal male displays, have been described in some tropical species. Most displays are aerial, and some are spectacular; in other species, such as the plainly coloured hermits of the genus Phaethornis, singing forms an important part of display behaviour.

Reproduction and life cycle

      The nests of tree swifts are tiny cups, barely large enough to hold the single egg. They are placed on small limbs, high up in trees, where they are subject to being moved about by the wind. The egg is glued to the bottom of the nest with the sticky saliva of the parent; this prevents the egg from being turned during incubation (as is done by virtually all other birds). It is thought that the waving of the nest branch in the wind may in some way act as a substitute to turning the egg, moving the egg's contents within the shell. One of the true swifts, the palm swift (Cypsiurus parvus) of the Old World tropics, also glues its egg into the nest, but the nest is very different. This species utilizes feathers and plant material and attaches the nest, little more than a flat pad, to the underside of a hanging palm leaf, where it, too, is subject to agitation by the wind.

      For such a relatively uniform group in a structural sense, the true swifts show a surprising variation in nesting habits. The New World palm swifts (Tachornis), like those of the Old World, place their nests under palm leaves, but the nest itself is more elaborate, being a sack entered from below through a tubular tunnel. Most other swifts nest either inside a crevice or hole (such as in the ground, in a tree, or between rocks), where they build a shallow cup of feathers and plant material as a flooring, or inside hollow trees, caves, or such man-made structures as buildings, wells, and tunnels. The nests may be circular cups placed on ledges or semicircular brackets attached to the walls. The bracket nests are fastened to vertical surfaces with a sticky secretion from the large salivary glands; in the swiftlet genus Collocalia, this substance may comprise most or all of the nest material itself. One species, the white-naped swift of Mexico, builds no nest at all but lays its eggs in a depression on bare sand on ledges deep inside caves.

      Clutches in the true swifts vary from one to about six white eggs, with the higher numbers being found among some of the more northern species of the genera Chaetura and Aeronautes. Incubation is by both sexes. The young are hatched completely naked. Young swifts are left unattended for longer periods than is true of most altricial (helpless) nestlings; the adults spend a substantial amount of time foraging for the relatively small insects on which they feed, in order to capture a sufficient number to warrant a trip back to the nest. In bad weather, when few insects are flying, the young may be left unbrooded for hours. In some birds this would normally lead to chilling and perhaps death, but young swifts maintain an essentially poikilothermic (cold-blooded (cold-bloodedness)) condition for the first few weeks of life, the body temperature dropping to near that of the environment without harming the young bird. In one genus, Cypseloides, the young develop a coat of downlike semiplumes (fluffy feathers) prior to the appearance of the juvenile pennaceous (smooth) contour feathers, and this fluffy coat also appears to aid in thermoregulation.

      Many species of swifts are colonial (colony) nesters, and even those that are relatively solitary during the breeding season appear to be highly gregarious at other times of year. Night roosts of some species may number hundreds of individuals, and foraging flocks may include several species. The northernmost species, such as the European swift and the chimney swift, are long-distance migrants. The winter home of the latter species was a mystery for many years until 1944; Indians in the upper Amazonian forests of Peru were found to have in their possession numbered aluminum bands that had been placed on the legs of chimney swifts by the United States Bureau of Biological Survey. migration is also known to occur in some of the tropical species, notably in Africa.

      India's population of the house swift has two breeding seasons per year. It is one of the few birds in the world in which this phenomenon has been demonstrated. Adult males are in full breeding condition in late January and again in May and June; eggs are laid in January and February and again in June to September. The molt cycle, however, appears to be independent of the breeding cycle, and the flight feathers are renewed only once a year.

      Unlike swifts, hummingbirds are largely polygamous. Female hummingbirds are the primary nest builders, and, although males may build nests as well, they are not used by the females. Most hummingbird nests, saddled on a branch, are composed of fine vegetable fibres, spider webs, fragments of bark, and lichens. Among the most interesting exceptions are the nests constructed by the hermits. They are long, slender, woven baskets of plant fibres and down, suspended from a strip of vegetation attached at only one side of the nest. The weight of the incubating female and, later, the weight of the young is counterbalanced by pebbles or clods of hard earth at the bottom of the dangling nest. The usual hummingbird clutch is two white eggs, and the female alone incubates and cares for the young in most species, although this is difficult to determine in the species that are not sexually dimorphic. In the sexually dimorphic species the juveniles usually resemble the adult females, although some genera have a distinctive juvenile plumage that resembles neither parent. The parent feeds the young by thrusting its bill deep within the young bird's throat and regurgitating food.

      Like the northern swifts, the hummingbirds that breed farthest north are the most highly migratory. The ruby-throated hummingbird was known to make annual nonstop flights across the Gulf of Mexico long before physiologists understood avian metabolism well enough to determine how this could be possible for such a tiny bird. Migration takes place among some Southern Hemisphere hummingbirds, such as the giant hummingbird and the green-backed fire crown (Sephanoides sephanoides); the latter reaches Tierra del Fuego and is thus the southernmost hummingbird, but there is little information about the nature and extent of these movements.

Ecology

      The distribution of both swifts and hummingbirds is strongly influenced by the specialized nature of their foods. Swifts are found virtually worldwide, but they are limited to areas where flying insects are found in sufficient numbers to sustain adults and young. Food of this kind is presumably more abundant in the tropics, and the family is primarily a tropical one; it is chiefly in the tropics that sympatric species (that is, those whose ranges overlap), sometimes closely related, may be found. Although there may be some altitudinal and other ecological separation of sympatric species, virtually nothing is known about possible partition of environmental resources among swifts; as many as three closely similar species of Chaetura can be seen foraging together in Trinidad. Swifts also forage with swallows.

      Hummingbirds are more specialized in their feeding habits, in that their bill shapes are in many cases correlated with the shapes of the most commonly utilized flowers. Because hummingbirds are restricted almost entirely to feeding at flowers, their distribution is affected by flowering periods, and the virtually seasonless tropics, where flowers of some kind may be found the year round, are, not surprisingly, the home of the most species. Despite the degree of specialization found, a flowering tree in the tropics may attract six species of hummingbirds simultaneously. In some cases feeding areas are strongly defended territories; in others the birds feed side by side, apparently ignoring each other completely.

torpor

      Swifts and hummingbirds are among the few groups of birds that have been shown to be capable of energy conservation through a reduction of their body temperature and entry into a torpid (torpor) (sluggish) condition. The extremely high metabolic rate of active hummingbirds suggests that the value of torpor to the birds lies in energy conservation while roosting at night. In the swifts, whose normal metabolic rate approaches that of other birds, the lowered body temperature is an energy-conserving mechanism during what may sometimes be long periods of fasting, such as when foraging for flying insects is not possible.

Paleontology and classification

      As might be expected of such fragile birds, no fossil species of hummingbirds (hummingbird) are known, although remains of Pleistocene (Pleistocene Epoch) origin (less than 1.8 million years old) have been reported for two living species. Five fossil swifts have been described; the earliest two date from the early part of the Miocene Epoch (about 20 million years ago).

Classification

      As presently constituted, the subdivisions of the order Apodiformes are summarized below.

Order Apodiformes

 Characterized primarily by the shape and proportions of the wing. The humerus (bone of the upper arm) is short, the hand is strikingly long, and the primary flight feathers (attached to the hand) are much longer than the secondaries (attached to the forearm). Other anatomical characteristics shared by swifts and hummingbirds include the holorhinal (the posterior border of the internal openings rounded) and impervious (without external openings) condition of the nostrils; single (left) carotid artery (except in swifts of the genus Cypseloides, which have 2); sternum without notches; and oil gland unfeathered.

      Suborder Apodi

 Bill short and gape (mouth) deeply cleft; tongue short; salivary glands large; crop absent; nostrils without opercula (coverings); 8–11 secondaries; 6–7 pairs of ribs.

      Family Hemiprocnidae (crested swift) (tree swifts)

 Hallux (hind toe) directed backward, not reversible, foot capable of perching; no claw on manus (hand). Hatched with natal down; a distinct juvenile plumage unlike that of adults; adult plumage with crests or plumes on head. 1 genus, 4 species.

      Family Apodidae (true swifts (swift))

 Hallux lateral or nearly so, reversible in some; foot incapable of true perching; claw present on hand. Young hatched naked; juvenile little different from adult in plumage; no crests or plumes. 18 genera, 99 species; however, the characteristics that separate a species from another, especially in Collocalia, are highly controversial.

      Suborder Trochili

 Bill slender, usually long, gape not deeply cleft; tongue long, tubular, and extensible; crop present in nestling; nostrils with opercula; 6–7 secondaries; 8 pairs of ribs.

      Family Trochilidae (hummingbirds (hummingbird))

 Over 109 genera and more than 320 species.

Critical appraisal

      The most fundamental question in the classification of the Apodiformes is whether the swifts and hummingbirds are in fact more closely related to each other than to any other birds. Some ornithologists believe that the resemblances in wing structure are convergent and that the other shared characters are relatively widespread among several orders of birds and of little significance in indicating relationships. These authorities argue that the differences between swifts and hummingbirds are so fundamental that the two groups could not have shared a common ancestor recently enough to warrant placement in the same order. Ornithologists holding this opinion would recognize a separate order, Trochiliformes, for the hummingbirds. The Caprimulgiformes (nightjars and allies) are usually considered to be the closest relatives of the swifts and hummingbirds. At present, DNA analyses have linked tree swifts to owlet-frogmouths (Aegithalidae); however, the affinities of the hummingbirds remain uncertain.

Kenneth C. Parkes

Additional Reading

Two notable works on swifts are Richard B. Fischer, The Breeding Biology of the Chimney Swift, Chaetura pelagica (Linnaeus) (1958), a thorough and excellently illustrated single-species study of a New World swift; and David Lack, Swifts in a Tower (1956, reprinted 1973), a popular summary based on numerous scattered scientific papers on Apus apus. Crawford H. Greenewalt, Hummingbirds (1960, reprinted 1990), is a beautifully illustrated popular book, with emphasis on the physics of plumage iridescence and of hummingbird flight. Eugène Simon, Histoire naturelle des “Trochilidæ” (Synopsis et catalogue) (1921), is the basis of a standard classification of hummingbirds, with detailed descriptions, keys, and nomenclatorial synonymies.Kenneth C. Parkes Ed.

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