Birds of Ecuador - Chaetura


Short-tailed Swift (Chaetura brachyura brachyura) Mocagua, Amazonas, Colombia
Photograph by Tom Friedel © All Rights Reserved.

Small T-shaped swift with short buff-colored back end. Back and back of wings blue-black. Seen in groups of 1000. Descends to nest in hollow dead palms.


Chapman's Swift (Chaetura chapmani) Guyana
Photograph by Dave Curtis Copyright and usage info This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. In short: you are free to share the file for non-commercial purposes under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

A small brown swift with contrasting browns on top half (head and mantle darker). Compare to Vaux's Swift and Chimney Swift. Chapman's Swift as recently lumped with Amazonian Swift of the western Amazon basin.


Grey-rumped Swift (Chaetura cinereiventris) Inírida, Guainía, Colombia
Photograph by Robert Lockett © All Rights Reserved.

Uniformly grey from below with light grey rump, and darker on back. Note wing shape and square tail.

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Pale-rumped Swift (Chaetura egregia)


Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica) Vulnerable Texas, United States
Photograph by Jim McCulloch Copyright and usage info This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. In short: you are free to share a d make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

A uniformly colored small swift which migrates from eastern North America, passing quickly through Central America, to South America. Vaux's Swift is similar, but has a paler throat and rump, and stops its migration in Central America.


Band-rumped Swift (Chaetura spinicaudus spinicaudus) Manuas, Brazil
Photograph by Cameron Rutt © All Rights Reserved.