We have six of these wheeling over the garden today.
They are bigger than normal swifts and with an obvious white belly (and twice the size of a house martin).
I had not appreciated they were silent - in contrast to the screeching of normal swifts. If I wasn't looking up, I wouldn't have known they were there.
My 'Birds of Cyprus' book (Lucas Christophorou, 1998) says these are spring visitors, but it looks to me like they are passage migrants - currently heading back south to winter in sub-Saharan Africa I would guess.
The bee eaters are doing the same thing (they have been back for about 2 weeks now, but will soon pass on).
Some useful info on European birds -
http://www.avibirds.comeg. for alpine swift -
http://www.avibirds.com/euhtml/Alpine_Swift.htmlApparently, alpine swifts collect material for their nests while on the wing.
...Thin pickings I would have thought! Strands of cobweb perhaps.
But, by strange coincidence, we had a few twisters blustering through the valley. The presence of some was given away by them picking up soil dust briefly. But a couple of others were shown-up by their swirling many pieces of straw high into the sky (and depositing some of it on our garden). Maybe it is just such material the alpine swifts use (though not at this time of year, of course).
Or maybe they pluck nesting materials from plants and trees as they fly.
