Description
It is 11 to 12 cm long and weighs 15 to 18 grams. The plumage is blackish-brown above, paler on the underparts. The rump is slightly paler than the rest of the upperparts. The tail is slightly forked and the wings are long and narrow. The bill and feet are black.
The subspecies A. f. micans is paler and greyer while A. f. vestitus is darker with a rump that is less obviously paler.
Several calls are uttered including a loud, rattling call used for echolocation in dark caves.
Read more about this topic: Edible-nest Swiftlet
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)