February 2023

11 Buckden Roundabout February 2023 Swift & Nest Boxes Swift Boxes Overwintering in E. Africa, swifts are summer visitors to the UK; their arrival, usually in early May, heralding or coinciding with warmer weather. They are very good flyers, fast and acro- batic and need to be since they sleep, eat, bathe and even mate on the wing. From leaving the nest as a fledgling, it is likely that the next time they land will be to raise a family of their own, some two or three years later. By this time, they will have flown around 20,000 miles all without landing! In fact, swifts don ’ t perch or land because they have tiny feet and legs which makes it very difficult for them to walk. Swifts pair for life and will return to the same nest site each year. No doubt you have seen them and heard them shrieking as they zoom around tall buildings such as St. Mary ’ s. They prefer nest sites high up in roofs or walls, squeezing through small holes to gain access. Like us, they will renovate their nest before laying their eggs and therein lies a problem. Our reno- vations in our desire to have energy efficient homes has meant that we have filled gaps in soffits, repaired gaps between tiles and generally sealed any gaps that a swift would utilize as a nesting site. This, along with a reduction in insect numbers, their food source, has led to a 50% decline in numbers over the past few years and they are now on the UK Conservation Status red list. However, all is not lost as we can help to stem this decline if we can provide suitable nesting sites. Specially designed swift nest boxes are available and for new - builds, swift bricks can be incorporated. The Parish Council would like your help to pro- vide some nesting places in the village and will arrange for boxes for residents to erect. There are some important things to consider if you would like to put up a swift box: • Swift nests need to have at least 5m clearance from the ground and in front of the box to give a clear flight path to and from the nest. • If the nest box is secured tight beneath the eaves, as- pect is not particularly critical and they can face any direction from NE through S to NW. • Swifts are colonial birds and would benefit from multi- ple boxes. It is generally recommended to install 2 - 4 or more boxes. • It can take several years for swifts to find new nest box- es. In the meantime, other birds such as house spar- rows might colonise the box(es). This can help house sparrows which are in decline too and their presence will indicate suitable sites to swifts. • For more information, visit the RSPB information page at https://shopping.rspb.org.uk/INTERSHOP/static/ WFS/RSPB - rspbUK - Site/ - /RSPB/en_GB/Product% 20PDFs/Swift%20Nestbox%202019%20instructions.pdf If you think you can provide a suitable site for swift boxes and would be interested in putting one up please contact the clerk at clerk@buckdenpc.org.uk Providing a nest box is one way to help swifts but not all of our houses are suitable sites. There are other things you can do too such as submitting sightings to the RSPB Swift Survey (www.rspb.org.uk/helpswifts). The in- formation we collect can help planners and ecologists to iden- tify where swifts already have colonies and how best to pro- tect these. Nestboxes It is that time of year when we take stock of the past year and start to lay plans for the next. On the wildlife front the nest boxes which have been put up around the village have all been cleaned out and the details of whether or not they have been used have been recorded. It has been a successful year with 57 of the eighty boxes used. Not all were successful, sev- en had been used and either failed or were abandoned and four boxes are still to be checked. These latter 4 are designed for owls and have almost certainly been used although proba- bly not by owls. This is the third year that some of the boxes have been out. The first set on Stirtloe Park had an almost 100% success rate. All the boxes designed for hole nesting species like blue and great tits had successfully fledged young. The three open - fronted boxes designed for birds like robins had all been ig- nored, perhaps the siting was wrong. Keeping a record of how these boxes have been used has been interesting. It does appear that the success rate increases once the boxes have become established for a while. We will have to see how things develop in 2023.