Swifts are intriguing birds for sure. They spend most of their lives flying - sleeping, eating, drinking and even mating on the wing - only ever landing to nest!
How do they manage that? Well while sleeping  on the wing, high up above the clouds, they shut down each half of their brain in sequence. 

And were you aware that they can collect over 1000 tiny insects and spiderlings in their throats and take them back to their chicks as one big ball or ‘bolus’?
I didn’t know much about Swifts until I started a project to try to conserve them back in 2014. Now I know more but there’s still so much ecologists still don’t know about this oh-so-aerial bird even now.

For example, is the widely reported drastic reduction in the numbers of insects, their only food, affecting their numbers?
With many cameras sited within nest boxes we know that chicks grow and survive well provided the weather remains warm and dry – so perhaps food is not a major problem….the jury is out on that one.
Certainly the loss of nest sites IS a major driver of this red listed bird’s decline which now stands at 60% in the last 25 years.

At that rate they could be extinct in the UK by 2040 unless we do something to help them.

Fortunately, helping them is easy and cheap and almost anyone can take part…..provided you have a two storey home on which you can install nest boxes for them.
At this time of the breeding season the numbers of swifts are at their highest because the breeding birds are joined by youngsters from previous years searching for vacant nest sites in which to breed the following year.

Their screaming parties, swooping low over our roofs are truly the’ sound of summer’.
Remarkably, across the UK, there are now over 100 local swift groups set up by passionate people trying to help their local Swifts.

And every year they organise a week in which they try to raise this bird’s profile.

UK Swift Awareness Week 2022 begins on July 2nd,
Across the UK there are over 60 events, with three here in Derbyshire;

• Bradwell on Saturday July 2nd
• Derby on Thursday July 7th 
• Melbourne on Saturday July 9th
• Rowsley on Sunday July 10th
• Peak Shopping Village on Sunday July 10th

All are evening Swift-watching walks so why not go along and find out more about their lives and their problems?

For details see our Events listing here 

A final few facts to whet your appetite:

• Swifts are long lived, the oldest recorded individual being 18 years old. It is estimated that it will have flown 4 million miles, equivalent to flying to the moon eight times during its life!
   
• Their chicks can go into a torpid state if the weather is poor and the adults can’t catch flying insects as a result. While an unfed blue tit will die within hours, a torpid swift chick can survive for at least 2-3 days until its parent returns.
   
• When a Swift chick fledges, it makes its own way down to the Congo where it flies over the forests there, feeding on insects but never landing once!
   
• The following spring it will returns to the UK and loos for a vacant nest site but may not enter one – so it returns to Africa for another winter. It may finally land at the entrance to an unoccupied nest site the next summer having been on the wing for 24 months!

So this coming week, be sure to look up and try to spot a Swift, or better, a gang of them screaming across the summer sky.

To find out more about the Derbyshire Swift Conservation Project and to report any locations for nesting Swifts, please email swifts@derbyshirewt.co.uk .