Migratory birds can fly nonstop for 10 months

​Washington: Scientists had long ago proposed that common swifts, a medium-sized migratory bird, might spend most of their lives in flight, but it is only now that it is proved that these birds can actually fly for 10 months straight.

"This discovery significantly pushes the boundaries for what we know about animal physiology," lead author Anders Hedenstrom of Lund University in Sweden, said in a statement on Saturday.

"A 10-month flight phase is the longest we know of any bird species -- it's a record." Previously, scientists have found frigate birds and alpine swifts can remain in flight for up to seven months. The new findings were published this week in the US journal Current Biology.

For this study, the researchers followed 13 individual birds, some of them for two years in a row, using a microdata log that was attached to each bird in southern Sweden.

These data loggers enabled the researchers to determine whether the birds were in the air or not, their acceleration, and where they had been at any given time after leaving their breeding site in August for a migration to Africa and before returning for the next breeding season 10 months later.