Your flying days are over

I'm fascinated by birds, even dead ones. This is a Swift, Apus apus (its scientific name means 'no foot'. They do have feet, but really small ones). A friend acquired it from someone else who has Swifts nesting in their attic. But this dead one was found, dessicated, under a dresser in a bedroom!

What an amazing body. Swifts spend almost their whole lives in the air. When young Swifts leave the nest, they might not touch down again anywhere for two or three years. They eat, sleep, mate and collect nest material while flying.

Nobody knows for sure where they spend winter - floating around somewhere over Africa. At night (unless they're incubating eggs) they fly around high up, resting one side of their brain at once and taking super-short naps. They routinely fly hundreds of mlles to find food when the weather's bad at home, and the chicks can go into a sort of torpor while the adults are away.

In this close-up of the Swift's head, you can see it has a tiny beak but an enormous gape for catching insects.

Mad but brilliant.