
Common swifts can stay aloft for up to 10 months - mhb
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/science/common-swifts.html
======
dogma1138
Here is a proper article: [http://phys.org/news/2016-10-ten-months-
air.html](http://phys.org/news/2016-10-ten-months-air.html)

And a link to the paper: [http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)3...](http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(16\)31063-6)

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gok
So they can stay aloft longer than the Swift language can stay backwards
compatible? :)

~~~
Humdeee
Objectively, yes.

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tonyplee
Where can I find a more technical description of the "logging" device that
weigh less than four hundredths of an ounce?

Love to study that - power source, communication methods, etc.

~~~
mongol
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_level_geolocator](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_level_geolocator)

~~~
verytrivial
I had no idea this was a technique! From a British Antarctic Survey report on
these devices[1]:

    
    
        Accuracy
        In field trials at Bird Island, South Georgia, the mean
        error (great-circle distance) in position estimation
        of static devices was 85 km, with standard deviations
        in latitudinal and  longitudinal errors of 0.61° and
        0.99°, respectively (BAS, unpublished data).
    

[1]
[http://polaris.nipr.ac.jp/~penguin/oogataHP/pdfarticles/23p2...](http://polaris.nipr.ac.jp/~penguin/oogataHP/pdfarticles/23p227-233.pdf)

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polemic
Makes you wonder if - given enough time - they (or perhaps a larger bird)
could evolve the ability to maintain a completely airborne life-cycle.

~~~
oh_sigh
You realize that birds lay eggs right?

~~~
andrewflnr
Oh come on, use your imagination. The feet evolve for carrying eggs. They re-
develop live birth. The young learn to hang on from the first moment. They fly
earlier. That's just the ideas from 20 seconds of thought.

~~~
oh_sigh
Sorry, I guess I was thinking realistically how this could happen.

~~~
joesb
If you don't know dolphin exists, it's not that reallistic how it could happen
either.

~~~
oh_sigh
I do know dolphins exist.

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Scarblac
It blows my mind that these birds spend summer in Europe, then migrate to
Africa where they stay most of the year -- _without ever touching ground
there_.

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tlb
Don't birds need to preen their feathers periodically? That seems like a
tricky maneuver while flying.

Reading the supplementary data [0], some of their results rely on sampling for
1 second every 5 minutes. So a bird could make occasional short landings for a
quick preen & stretch without it necessarily being detected.

[0]
[http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2069927387/2067831537/mmc...](http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2069927387/2067831537/mmc1.pdf)

~~~
throwanem
Preening has a few purposes; cleaning is most obvious, and beside that are
straightening out disarranged feathers and ensuring that secreted oils are
evenly spread for waterproofing.

For the swift in cruising flight, none of these requirements is likely to
apply; the slipstream itself will help a great deal to keep the feathers in
aerodynamic conformation, and dirt, parasites, and bodies of water are rarely
found at altitude. (Rain is a plausible concern, and I'd be curious to know
how swifts cope. Given their small size and altitude of flight, I wouldn't be
surprised to learn they rarely notice any but the heaviest of storms.)

------
duck
A couple months ago, another similar fascinating story about frigatebirds was
on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12036725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12036725)

And an older story about swifts:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6527669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6527669)

------
kovrik
So what and how do they eat and drink?

~~~
existencebox
Likely flying bugs. Plenty of fluids and proteins.

Random source; yep, pure insectivore.
[http://www.commonswift.org/Hand_rearing_Swifts.html](http://www.commonswift.org/Hand_rearing_Swifts.html)

------
majewsky
Anyone else here who checked the URL for "/2016/04/01/"?

~~~
throwanem
Why would this be an April fool's? Birds are amazing! This one has a variable-
geometry wing adapted for an enormous degree of flying efficiency, and can
spend almost its entire life aloft, landing only to lay eggs and rear young.
They're fast as anything, too - the fastest known bird in level flight is a
swift - and fly at altitudes well over a mile, where the air is too thin and
the ascent too time-consuming for a lot of birds ever to go.

In a lot of ways, the swift is the Concorde of birds - small, sleek,
astonishingly fast, and accustomed to operating in regimes beyond anything
accessible to most of its kin. Fortunately for the swift, though, it need not
rely on the mercurial good graces of Airbus to stay aloft.

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beedogs
Welp, scratch the New York Times off my list of news sites. That goes straight
to a login page now. No article, nothing.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
I agree; it's terrible that journalists expect to be compensated for their
labor.

~~~
bbcbasic
Its weird having HN submission where only a subset of HNers can make comments
though. I am happy for them to have a paywall but question whether it should
be kept on HN if there is no information for most people to comment on.

It is the equivalent of linking to a paid book on Amazon and having a
discussion about the book's content.

~~~
pjmorris
> It is the equivalent of linking to a paid book on Amazon and having a
> discussion about the book's content.

I'd wager, without proof for the moment, that the majority of books discussed
on HN are 'paid books' at Amazon or elsewhere.

~~~
taneq
To be fair, Blindsight comes up on a very regular basis, and that's freely
available on the author's web site. :)

But yeah, despite the increasing prevalence of legitimate free-to-air soft
copies of books, paid is still the default.

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siranachronist
so does that mean the language updates more frequently than the bird?

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imron
But what is its unladen air-speed?

~~~
throwanem
Depends on the species; the white-throated needletail has been clocked doing
about 170km/h, which is the fastest yet seen of any bird in level flight.
(Peregrines, commonly awarded the "fastest bird" laurel, of course outdo this
by far - but only in a power dive, where they get 9.8m/s² for free.)

