In the summer why not sit on the bench in the square in Kinloch Rannoch and soak up the atmosphere. If you do, don't forget to listen. Every now and then there will be a high-pitched screaming noise from above. It is the call of swifts, those most aerial of birds. They nest in the Dunalastair Hotel roof and in the Country Store roof. Their original nesting sites were cliffs but now they can make use of mankind's buildings provided they are reasonably high and providing that they can get into the roof space to make their nests. They usually have a couple of young with one being larger than the other because it starts developing first. This means that at least the bigger chick is likely to survive. The eggs can survive chilling whereas most birds eggs cannot. In addition the chick is hatched with quite a lot of fat and can survive lean periods by lowering its metabolic rate, something that is only otherwise done by humming birds.
Swifts arrive late in Kinloch Rannoch - in the second week of May or there abouts and they leave early in the second week of August to fly to West Africa and then on to Central Africa. When migrating swifts may use rising air in the form of thermals to reach heights of 10,000 feet before gliding down and so they save energy. The young are able to navigate to Africa using instinct, they don't get shown the way.
Swifts do a lot of things on the wing that other birds have to land on terra firma to do.
They can drink rain drops caught in the air. They can sleep on the wing. They can fly for 10 months without landing. They can even mate on the wing - this is not easy, try it.
They feed by catching insects in the air with their large bristle-surrounded mouths agape. The insects are collected into a large ball at the back of the mouth, called a bolus, which may contain up to 1000 insects. The British Swift (Apus apus) holds the confirmed world speed record for level flight (note peregrines are faster but only in a stoop). The swift has narrow sickle-shaped wings and an unmatched mastery of flight which means that it is seldom caught by a predator. It is likely that only sick birds are caught by the graceful falcon known as the hobby which is no slouch on the wing itself.
The swift has four toes on each foot and they are positioned as two pairs which close in from the sides after the fashion of a koala bear. The plumage is dark brown with a pale patch under the skin. In flight, when silhouetted against the sky they appear black. The nest is a rudimentary affair because they can only make it of flimsy material that they can catch in flight. Things like feathers, paper and butterfly wings are stuck together with saliva.
The swifts are an ancient group which goes back in evolution as far as the dinosaurs. This is known from fossil evidence but is confirmed in a rather interesting if somewhat gruesome way by their parasites. There is a group of parasites called the Mallophaga which specialise in parasitising birds. Their common name is Louse Fly but in fact they cannot fly because they have no functional wings. They have special claws that allow them to grip the base of the birds feathers and they take a blood meal when the want. They are relatively enormous and if you were to scale up the swift to human size it would be like us having a parasite clinging to us that was the size of a lobster. Next time you look up at the passing swift contemplate that it is a swift with a large parasite attached to it. Because swifts are so aerial the Louse Fly can only transfer to a new swift in the nest and this is where the young (and you may justifiably say unfortunate) swift will pick up its life's companion. From the evolutionary point of view this is important - the swift and its parasite have evolved together and the swift's Louse Fly is sufficiently different from other Louse Flys to show that it has been evolving on the swift for a long time and hence the swift lineage is ancient.
Intriguingly some of the order of parasites that afflict swifts, the Mallophaga, are parasites on Elephants and Warthogs. I'm sure that this knowledge will come in very handy the next time that you are in a pub quiz, especially if someone treats you to a swift half.