Gary’s comments

To be clear from the start, this edition of the newsletter has nothing to do about our travels because we have been busy moving from Valencia to Falset, remodelling our house, and getting settled into the public medical system here. Also, since we bought a house, we qualify for a different kind of visa that will make traveling in the EU much easier. Unfortunately, this involves going through the immigration process again and dealing with US bureaucrats who don’t know about email and don’t trust foreign phone numbers, and Spanish bureaucrats who love paper and stamps.  A great example is the “deed” to our house has 119 numbered pages and about 30 pages of attachments that aren’t numbered.  I tried to count the number of stamps, but I kept falling asleep.

The room we use for an office our house has views of the town and valley, and I recently noticed some small, very fast birds darting around and flying into rooftops of the buildings. I did a bit of research and found the birds are called Swifts in English and Vencejos in Spanish.  The more I read about these critters, the more fascinated with them I became.  So this newsletter is what I leaned.

Swifts

Swifts are small, black and white in color, with curved, swept-back wings.  And they are fast!  They’re the fighter aircraft of the bird world.  Swifts are very common throughout Europe, much of Asia, and both North and South America, although I have never seen one outside of Europe.  Below is an image of a White Throated Swift that looks much like the ones we see here. 

Swifts are mostly seen during the day darting around catching bugs and taking them back to their nests.  They make their nests on tree branches or on the side of buildings.  Lots of them here use the gaps in the terra cotta roof tiles.  Nests are made from dried saliva and stuck to the wall or tree, and look much like wasp nests.  If you have ever had bird-nest soup, this is what it’s made of.  I’ve read it is delicious, but very expensive.  Somehow, I can’t quite get the idea of paying a lot for soup made from bird spit and chewed bugs. (see reference).

Below is a video I took from my office window. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot to see.  These guys are small and fly fast. Expand the video if you can, and focus on the yellow building on the right. You should see a small brown blob just under the rain gutter on the right side of the building.  This is a swift nest. The swifts fly directly at it at full speed then just seem to stop in the air and disappear inside the nest.

Swifts have very short legs, so it is very difficult for them to run fast enough to take off from the ground. Therefore, they spend almost all of their life in the air. Except for the 1-2 months they are nesting, they eat, sleep, drink, and mate in flight! Below is an image of a Swift having drink while in flight. 

Swifts are also migratory.  European Swifts nest in Europe from about April to September then migrate to southern Africa for the European winter, a distance of 3,000-8,000 miles or 4,800-13,000 kilometers.

References

Swifts:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(bird)

Bird nest soup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest