White-rumped Swifts visit South Africa from equatorial Africa during our warmer months (August to May, though a few stay through the winter). They’re usually seen on the wing, catching flying insects over open country, often close to water and commonly in towns and cities. Usually seen in small flocks of around a dozen, they migrate in larger groups of up to a hundred.
Monogamous pairs of White-rumped Swifts often breed in colonies throughout spring and summer, usually in nests hijacked from other kinds of swifts and swallows. Clutches consist of 1-3 eggs and are incubated for about 3 weeks. Compared to many similarly-sized birds the chicks develop slowly and only fledge shortly before reaching two months old. Adult White-rumped Swifts measure 16cm long and weigh around 24g.
The IUCN lists the White-rumped Swift as being of least concern.
DeWetsWild 
Amazing birds! Great name!
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Thank you, Robert
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I didn’t know about their habit of taking ready-made nests from others. Photographing birds in flight isn’t easy, even when they aren’t as swift or fly so high. How nice to be able to capture these shots from a comfortable veranda!
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Thanks for the kind comments, Carol!
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Welgedaan
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Dankie Tina!
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If your swifts are anything like our white-throated needletail swifts, then they are devilishly difficult to photograph. Mostly we just see dots in the sky moving ahead of a stormfront.
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I found that they’re the perfect subjects to try and capture “on film” from a comfortable seat on the veranda of a picturesque little cottage in the mountains… One in a hundred pictures might just turn out good enough for posting here! 😀
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🙂
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I salute you for capturing these swiftly flying birds on camera! A pair of them hijacked the Lesser-striped Swallow’s nest outside our front door two years ago and this year ejected the swallow’s eggs (they had got in first).
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Thank you, Anne!
These nest-hijacking and egg-smashing habits of theirs are certainly not their most endearing features…
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Great shots, Dries. I had to smile at the name, imagining if we humans were named according to our prominent physical features. 🤣
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Thank goodness we get our names when we’re babies, so we would hopefully all have had rather cute names!
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Swifts certainly are. 🙂 I did smile at the name, though, as rumps seem to belong to larger, non-bird animals.
janet
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😅
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I’m sure they’re glad they’re called “white”-rumped and not “wide”-rumped though! 😀
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🙂 I bet they are.
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