The Pacific swift (Apus pacificus) is a bird that breeds in eastern Asia. This swift is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere's winter in a wide range of habitats in Southeast Asia and Australia. The general shape and blackish plumage recall its relative, the common swift, from which it is distinguished by a white rump band and heavily marked underparts. Its main call is a screech typical of its family. It breeds in sheltered locations such as caves and rock crevices, or under the eaves of houses. The nest is a half-cup of dry grass and other fine material that is gathered in flight, cemented with saliva and attached to a vertical surface. Two or three white eggs are incubated for about seventeen days before hatching. Like all swifts, the Pacific swift feeds exclusively on insects caught in flight. The species has a large population that occurs as far afield as the US and New Zealand, and rarely in Europe.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_swift
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1797:
The Riobamba earthquake, the most powerful in Ecuador's history, devastated Riobamba and many other cities, causing at least 6,000 casualties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1797_Riobamba_earthquake
1945:
World War II: U.S. forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest of the Japanese internment camps in the Philippines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Tomas_Internment_Camp
1974:
American newspaper heiress and socialite Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which she later joined, in one of the most well-known cases of Stockholm syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst
2008:
The London low emission zone, governing what types of vehicles may enter Greater London, came into operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_low_emission_zone
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
cachexia: (pathology) A systemic wasting of muscle tissue, with or without loss of fat mass, that accompanies a chronic disease. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cachexia
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
I recall standing on the edge of a deep valley in the Hawaiian island of Maui, thinking that the life stream is like a mountain river — springing from hidden sources, born out of the earth, touched by stars, merging, blending, evolving in the shape momentarily seen. It is molecules probing through time, found smooth-flowing, adjusted to shaped and shaping banks, roiled by rocks and tree trunks — composed again. Now it ends, apparently, at a lava brink, a precipitous fall. Near the fall's brink, I saw death as death cannot be seen. I stared at the very end of life, and at life that forms beyond, at the fact of immortality. Dark water bent, broke, disintegrated, transformed to apparition — a tall, stately ghost soul emerged from body, and the finite individuality of the whole becomes the infinite individuality of particles. Mist drifted, disappeared in air, a vanishing of spirit. Far below in the valley, I saw another river, reincarnated from the first, its particles reorganized to form a second body. It carried the same name. It was similar in appearance. It also ended at a lava brink. Flow followed fall, and fall followed flow as I descended the mountainside. The river was mortal and immortal as life, as becoming. --Charles Lindbergh https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh