The sooty swift (''Cypseloides fumigatus'') is a species of
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
in subfamily
Cypseloidinae
The Cypseloidinae are a subfamily of swifts and contain the following species:
* Genus ''Cypseloides''
:* Spot-fronted swift (''Cypseloides cherriei'')
:* White-chinned swift (''Cypseloides cryptus'')
:* Sooty swift (''Cypseloides fumigatus' ...
of the swift family
Apodidae
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are not closely related to any passerine species. Swifts are placed in the order Apodiformes with hummingbirds. The treeswifts are closely r ...
.
[HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 6. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v6_Dec21.zip retrieved August 7, 2022] It is found in
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
, and
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
.
[Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm retrieved July 24, 2022]
Taxonomy and systematics
The sooty swift,
Rothschild's swift
Rothschild's swift (''Cypseloides rothschildi'') is a Near Threatened species of bird in subfamily Cypseloidinae of the swift family Apodidae.HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International di ...
(''Cypseloides rothschildi''),
white-chested swift
The white-chested swift (''Cypseloides lemosi'') is a species of bird in subfamily Cypseloidinae of the swift family Apodidae.HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist o ...
, (''C. lemosi''), and
American black swift
The American black swift, or more simply black swift (''Cypseloides niger''), is a species of bird that is found from northern British Columbia in Canada through the United States and Mexico to Costa Rica and Brazil. They are also found in the Ca ...
(''C. niger'') form a
superspecies. Some authors have treated sooty and Rothschild's swifts as
conspecific
Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species.
Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organ ...
.
[Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved July 24, 2022] The sooty swift is
monotypic
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...
.
[
]
Description
The sooty swift is about long. Males weigh about and females about . The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have a brown head, a black patch around the eye, and lighter brown forehead and cheeks. Their back is a darker brown than the head. The upper side of their tail is brown and the underside a grayer brown. The upper side of the wing is mostly blackish brown and the underside somewhat lighter. Juveniles have some gray fringing on the body and wings but are otherwise like adults.[Hernandez, N. (2020). Sooty Swift (''Cypseloides fumigatus''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.sooswi1.01 retrieved October 1, 2022]
Distribution and habitat
The sooty swift is found from southern Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...
in southeastern Brazil south to Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...
, eastern Paraguay, and northern Argentina's Misiones Province
Misiones (, ''Missions'') is one of the 23 provinces of Argentina, located in the northeastern corner of the country in the Mesopotamia region. It is surrounded by Paraguay to the northwest, Brazil to the north, east and south, and Corrientes ...
. There are no records in Bolivia despite its being included there in some taxonomic lists. The sooty swift has mostly been recorded over evergreen montane
Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial f ...
, tropical, and temperate forests, and also secondary forest
A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...
, scrublands, and marshes. In elevation it is found between .[
]
Behavior
Migration
The sooty swift is apparently a year-round resident throughout its range.[
]
Feeding
Like all swifts, the sooty is an aerial insectivore, but no details of its diet are known.[
]
Breeding
The sooty swift's breeding season varies somewhat across its range, but is between October and February overall. It makes a cup or crescent shaped nest of moss, ferns, leaves, pebbles, and mud on a rock face. Most nests are on cliff ledges but some are on the vertical face itself. Most are very near waterfalls and even behind them. It lays a single egg. The incubation period and time to fledging are not known.[
]
Vocalization
The sooty swift's flight calls have been described as "a rapid, rattling ''ti-i-i-i-a-a-a'', as well as ''tiju-tiju'' and a weak ''sip'' or ''sip-sip''."[
]
Status
The IUCN
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...
has assessed the sooty swift as being of Least Concern. it has a large range but its population size is not known and believed to be decreasing. No immediate threats have been identified.[
]
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1264159
sooty swift
Birds of Brazil
Birds of the Atlantic Forest
sooty swift
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot