Collocalia esculenta
Silhouette: Aviceda (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~80% in a week >90%
The glossy swiftlet (Collocalia esculenta) is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It is found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and eastwards to New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. The glossy swiftlet was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Hirundo esculenta. The type locality is Ambon Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. The specific epithet esculenta is from esculentus the Latin word for "edible".
There are 17 recognised subspecies: Wikipedia →
Flight call0:15
Indonesia · 2011
© Frank Lambert · XC89637 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tangkoko Nature Reserve | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 2 | Raja Ampat | 🇮🇩 Indonesia |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Makassar | 🇮🇩 Indonesia |
Likely
About 40% of wildlife watchers report a Glossy Swiftlet sighting in Raja Ampat on a given day, based on 541 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 18th most-seen of the 200 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 80%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
April and May
In those months about 60% of wildlife watchers report a Glossy Swiftlet in Raja Ampat on a given day, against about 30% in March, September and November–December, the lowest months.
Between 10 pm and 1 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Glossy Swiftlet sightings with a recorded time, and about 6 in 10 of them come between 6 pm and 6 am: it is most active around dawn and dusk.
2nd of 2
Of the 2 parks where we can rate Glossy Swiftlet sightings, Raja Ampat ranks 2nd at about 40%. The best odds are in Tangkoko Nature Reserve (Indonesia, about 60%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Glossy Swiftlet is recorded against all the birds logged in Raja Ampat (541 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
