Background

• Swifts are magical creatures who light up our summer skies with their amazing acrobatic skills.
• They only spend around 3 months of the year in the U.K. and travel annually to sub-Saharan Africa to winter – see Amazing Swift Facts for more on these remarkable birds.
• Their population is under threat. The British Breeding Bird Survey estimates that breeding numbers have dropped by 60% in the last 25 years.
• This is largely as a result of loss of nest sites.
• Swifts’ most common nest site is under the roof tiles on buildings. Re-roofing, insulating and improving buildings has often resulted in the loss of nests sites as they are (inadvertently) made inaccessible to the birds.
• The purpose of this project is to create new nest sites for swifts within North Nibley and thereby make a small contribution towards reversing their current downward population trend

So what’s the plan?

• Having had 2 pairs of swifts successfully breed in nest boxes on our house in 2021 the plan is to build and put up as many more nest boxes as possible and thereby make North Nibley into something of a ‘swift hub’.
• I will build the boxes so the only cost is raw materials
• Tim Andrews of Orchard Revival cider has produced a ‘S.O.S’ Save Our Swifts cider with 20p per bottle sold going towards the cost of the boxes.
• Originally I thought this might well bring the cost down for everyone taking part but the combination of far more people getting involved than I ever dreamt of and the cost of raw materials rising means it will be used to keep the cost as originally planned – £20 per pair of boxes.

And what’s the aim?

• The plan is to have at least another 10 twin nest boxes erected by spring 2022 with more to follow in subsequent years.
• March 2022 update: take up has FAR exceeded this plan and I am currently putting up TWENTY SEVEN twin boxes around the village and a further 14 single ones have gone to KLB to be put up around the school site – AMAZING!
• See How To Get Involved for………how to get involved.

Bird ringing

• The other aspect of this project is bird ringing – this is one of the main methods for collecting data on our birds.
• This is done by safely catching them, attaching a small, uniquely numbered metal ring to their leg and then recapturing them in future years to measure things like survival rates, longevity etc.
• See Bird Ringing for more detailed information on this
• Although there is a lot of historical data from ringing swifts, very little is currently being collected and this could be very useful to inform, for example, how to encourage our swift population to recover
• So the plan is to ring all the chicks in the nest and all nesting adults as they leave the nest.
• This is done with extreme care for the safety and welfare of the birds using well tried and tested techniques.
• I am a fully qualified bird ringer with many years of experience and the data collected will be of great conservation value for the birds