Of all of our migratory summer visiting birds the Swift is usually one of our last to arrive with most birds first seen towards the end of April or the beginning of May, having travelled over 4,000 miles from their wintering feeding grounds in Central and Southern Africa. At first these elegant masters of the skies silently arrive almost unnoticed but as more birds arrive and their numbers start to increase that familiar sound of a piercing scream fills our skies once again as birds re-equate themselves with former partners, or previous non breeding birds vie for the attention of a potential new partner as they race past at breathtaking speeds. Once the short breeding season is over and the juveniles have fledged, adults and juveniles join together in a noisy and acrobatic display in the skies above flocking together in 50 or more before their all too brief summer visit is over for another year and, as the end of August approaches, they start to make their return trip south again for warmer climates and better feeding grounds ahead of our cooler autumn weather and once again our skies fall silent for another year.
Where I live in a Edwardian terraced street in north-east London, where the houses were built more than a century ago, I'm lucky enough to see these birds every year as they breed and make their nests under the eaves, in a gap in the wall or under a broken or slipped tile. Unfortunately, due in main to the modern methods of building new houses and the materials used, these enigmatic birds are at risk with recent research and studies showing their numbers have plummeted alarmingly by 50% over of the last 20 years with estimates suggesting there are now less than 50,000 breeding birds left in the UK.
With this in mind I decided to make a couple of Swift boxes, the easy part was constructing the boxes the difficuly came when I had to install the boxes under the guttering of my house on the north or east facing wall 60ft high!
To install the Swift boxes I looked at a couple of options, Plan A was to contact a roofing friend I know and borrow a set of long ladders and scale the side of the house but after surveying the site and for my own personal health and safety it was decided this was a bit too risky, especially due to the narrow lean of the ladders and the slope the house sits upon!
It was then decided to put Plan B into action - open upstairs bathroom window, lean out carefully and attach the boxes to the underside of the fascia board beneath the guttering, probably not the best location available for the boxes but a lot safer, but even this position caused its own problems and I had to settle with installing the boxes slightly lower than first planned! There was a Plan C which involved calling the local fire service - probably not the smartest of ideas!
The boxes are now up and as I patiently await the arrival of our summer visitors, I can reflect upon the sounds of last summer and hope the boxes will be successful in attracting a breeding pair of Swifts this year, but should the boxes be unused this summer I still feel a sense of achievement in at least trying to make a difference no matter how small.
For more information on Swifts and building your own nest boxes
http://www.londons-swifts.org.uk/ is an excellent resource.
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