Wildlife in the garden - swift
Some of our distinctive summer visitors are getting ready to depart the UK, back to warmer climes. Swifts migrate to Britain from Africa every year, spending a few months here to raise their chicks. They arrive in late April or May and leave again in early-mid August. Swifts are fast flyers which are similar in appearance to swallows and house martins, but look closer and you’ll see that, as well as a forked tail, swifts have long, pointed wings held in a boomerang or sickle shape, which marks them out from the others.
They’re a sooty brown colour, though look black when you see them in flight against the sky, and quite often you might hear them before you see them, as they make a high-pitched ‘screaming’ sound – a noticeable and distinctive sound of summer when flocks of them are zooming around rooftops at high speed on a warm evening. In fact, swifts spend almost their whole lives in flight. They eat, sleep, drink and mate on the wing and usually only land when it’s time to nest. These birds pair for life, and return to the same site every year to fix up their nests and then raise a brood of chicks.
Sadly, swift nest sites are disappearing as old buildings are renovated and modern insulation removes gaps in roofs and soffits. It means that swifts are on the red list in the UK Conservation Status Report and it’s estimated there are just 38 000 – 40 000 nesting pairs in Britain this summer.
We can help swifts by installing nesting boxes or swift bricks, which are hollow bricks slotted into the walls of new or old homes, providing a helpful cavity for these birds to nest and raise their young. Scotland made history earlier this year by becoming the first UK country to introduce a legal requirement that should see nesting bricks for swifts included in new buildings.
