LOS ANGELES — After attaching electronic monitors to half a dozen Alpine swifts, researchers say they were shocked to discover that the migrating birds flew nonstop for 200 days.
The birds ate, drank and slept on the fly for more than six months, according to the Swiss scientists who recently published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
Only aquatic animals such as dolphins had been found capable of such long-term locomotion. (Dolphins sleep by resting half of their brain at a time.)
Researchers at the Swiss Ornithological Institute and the Bern University of Applied Sciences captured six Alpine swifts prior to their migration to Western Africa and attached a monitor to each bird. The devices used sunlight to track the bird’s location and also measured changes in their body position and movement.
When the birds returned six to seven months later, three of them were recaptured.
What the researchers found was that during the daytime, the birds’ activity and pitch measurements showed that they were aloft. At night, the birds appeared to be gliding for long distances.
Swifts feed on bugs and spiders that are swept into the sky by high winds. They get much of their water from this prey but are able to skim ponds and lakes while in flight.