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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_(non-human)#Birds:

"A peculiarity that birds share with aquatic mammals, and possibly also with certain species of lizards (opinions differ about that last point), is the ability for unihemispheric sleep. That is the ability to sleep with one cerebral hemisphere at a time, while the other hemisphere is awake"

In other words: the brain has two CPUs, and they switch off only one at a time.

Early M7 variant? I'd sure like the creator to chime in and dismiss the work as a marketing gimmick.

Completely guessing here, but I suppose it's the same sort of involuntary control you have over your body during sleep that keeps you from wetting yourself or rolling off the bed in the middle of the night.

I was more curious about how they eat and drink during extended flights.

Swifts catch insects in flight, so food isn't a problem. I think there are species which can extract all the water they need from their food, so they may be able to go without drinking.

Swifts drink in flight, you can often see them flying very close to the surface of water... a bit like water bombers.