On Wed, 12 Mar 1997, Gil Langfield wrote:
> in the sky were hundreds of swifts, so high that I had great difficulty
> discerning which of the two species they were. With a lot of imagination,
> some of them seemed to have white under the rump and so they were probably
> all Needletails.
I had a similar experience in the Otways last weekend, but luckily a few
came down much lower at times, and I was able to see that they were mostly
needletails plus a few Fork-tailed Swifts.
> 1. How high were these swifts, and how many are sucked into the engines of
> the jets on their long approach over Toolangi to Melbourne Aiport?
Can't answer this one; but I guess they'd be snap-frozen if they were more
than a few thousand metres up.
> 2. Are there swifts everywhere that we do not see until we look up with
> binoculars?
Probably not, but in late summer over hill country, they're nearly always
there somewhere (speaking for my own turf in the Otway Ranges of SW
Victoria).
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Lawrie Conole
Geelong, Victoria, Australia
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