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Common Swifts are medium-sized swifts. Their plumage is all dark-grey, except a light-grey throat patch and mid-grey flight feathers. The entire body plumage has thin light-grey edges, leading to a finely scalloped appearance when seen close-up. Swifts, as the name suggests, are fast fliers; accordingly, their wings have the shape of a backward-bent sickle, which - together with the relatively short, prominently forked tail - distinguishes them from swallows. In-flight the very short legs are invisible.

Twitcher's tip

Common Swifts are difficult to distinguish from Pallid Swifts. They are overall less brownish and more slender, with slightly darker-grey flight feathers and a smaller throat patch.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Common Swift is available HERE .

Common Swifts are a strongly migratory species; except when breeding they are continuously on the wing. Their breeding grounds are along the north-western African coastal fringe, in all of Europe (except small parts of the northern coastline of Scandinavia), Asia Minor and mid- to high-latitude Asia (to about 70 degrees geographical latitude), reaching the eastern Russian coastline. In the South-east their breeding range extends through Syria, Iraq, Iran onwards into the southern half of Pakistan and the northern half of India, and into the Himalayas. They winter in/above all of southern Africa, to the South of the equator, except the very tip near the Cape of Good Hope. During their migration Common Swifts can also be found (in the air above) anywhere in Arabia and the northern half of Africa.

During the breeding season Common Swifts will be found near suitable nest sites (rockfaces, ruins, houses, bridges, viaducts), in the vicinity of good hunting grounds (e.g. near water). Outside the breeding season their movements will be dominated by the availability of flying insects, which are often abundant in wetlands, especially stagnant water or in marshy river deltas.

We have not spotted Common Swifts in Oman yet, but have encountered them in Europe.