27. African Palm Swift The African Palm Swift comes in the standard swift shape – scimitar wings, sharply-pointed tail, a mousey-brown kind of grey, with a patch under the throat of a slightly paler grey. In the air and silhouetted against the evening sky, swirling around like tea-leaves in a tea-cup, catching unseeably small flying insects – which is almost always where you’ll see it – they look plain black. It is a bit bigger than the Little Swift, but may look smaller because its body and wings are a bit thinner. They are invariably associated with palm trees: that’s where they roost and breed. It is not easy, sleeping while clinging to a vertically hanging frond of palm. Their nests are untidy little shelves of feathers glued with a specially regurgitated swift-glue to the fronds, and the chicks must learn to cling on with their tiny claws very soon after hatching. Their legs are not much use for anything else: if they fall from the palm tree before they can fly, they are doomed. I have found chicks who have fallen: you can’t do much except try to get it to hang onto a frond where it is at least possible it might be fed. Birds of AFRICAMA House 58 Birds of AFRICAMA House 59