#swallows

Gossamer swallows are small and rotund, with sizes up to 10 cm and weights up to 11 grams. Their heads, necks, and underside are brackish brown, and their backs and wings are almost black with a green shimmer. 

Like other swallows, gossamer swallows are endurant and swift flyers, but unlike many of their relatives perch to feed. Their wings are unusually large and strong, which supports their hunting style.

Gossamer swallows are insectivores and, like most swallows, catch their prey in flight. Instead of rapidly swooping at flying or sitting prey, gossamer swallows employ a hunting style more similar to that of spiders:

The swallows’ saliva has a unique composition that allows it to congeal into fine, silk-like strings when it leaves their beaks. While it does not quite have the tensile strength of spider silk, it is robust enough and just as sticky. When they set out to hunt, gossamer swallows begin to drool, and pick up the resulting strings with their wings when they become long enough.

Eventually, this results in a whole, translucent curtain of sticky silk the swallows drag with them, weighed down on the end with solidified drops of saliva. This curtain extends down about 15 cm on average, longer than the swallow’s own body length. In 2017, a specimen in Peru was caught on video with a curtain extending down at least thrice the bird’s length.

This allows gossamer swallows to hunt in bulk instead of hunting down and snatching up selected, high-value targets. Often, a swallow will rush through a swarm of insects, and catch a whole meal. 

This hunting strategy comes at a cost, though: while most other swallows feed as they hunt and do not need to land, gossamer swallows need to perch to pick the strands of silk off their wings and consume them along with the caught prey. This leaves them vulnerable to predators. 

The gossamer swallows’ main predators are the different species of wild cats and foxes native to the Andes. On occasion, swallow nests are raided by corvids and - during times of severe food scarcity - even by Andean condors.

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