Photo © Inger Lund

Find out here all about these amazing birds, why they matter, and how you can help them

Though Swifts only spend 3 or 4 months each Summer with us, while they are here they bring spectacular aerial action and excitement to our urban lives!

Swifts breed from Ireland to Beijing, from the Mediterranean and the Middle East right up to the Arctic, and everywhere they are in decline.

But you can help them, and you can do it on your own, or with the help of friends and neighbours, or through your work, and it will give you great satisfaction and save a species from extinction too.

 
Moscow Swift Pod in Coriam © Arch Group Architects

After a successful breeding season, our Swifts have
left us for Africa and the Congo

Hot and dry weather has meant that they found the flying insect food they need for their chicks, so they have bred well.
But a 58% decline in their UK population from 1969 to 2018 still
puts Swifts on the Red List of species threatened with extinction.

This past Summer you could see Swifts, high and low, over towns, villages, and cities too, snapping up flying insects and indulging in great screaming get-togethers.

Now they are heading back for the Congo and sub-equatorial Africa via France, Spain, Morrocco and all of West Africa. Will we see them again next year? An estimated 20% die on the migration, but the rest will do their best to return.

Nest-place loss from re-building and development, insect food loss from over-use of agricultural insecticides, increasingly severe weather on migration, long-term droughts, agricultural intensification and deforestation in their wintering grounds in Africa, all are pushing their populations to the brink. So we have to help them survive.

Swifts have shared our buildings ever since the Romans came to Britain and the deforestation of the British Isles started. That was when Swifts moved away from nesting in holes in trees and moved into our buildings. Nearly all now breed in old eaves and gables, they cannot use modern buildings as these exclude them.

Unless we help them Swifts will vanish from the UK, and from the World too. Help them! Read on to see what you can do! Hints: put up a nest box and stop using biocides in your garden!

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