Nick Mallalieu shares an exciting update on the swift boxes housed in St David’s Church, Ashprington, with plenty to be pleased about this autumn.
Swifts visit us only from late April until early August, a very short time, during which they raise their young. At St David’s they continued to be attracted by our Swift Caller, a MP3 player with Swift Tweets, over the last 2 years but again none visited our nesting boxes in the summers of 2023 and 2024. I felt there must be a problem and guessed it was the rather torturous route the birds faced in negotiating the slate louvres of the belfry window which is followed by a couple of hurdles before they could reach the nest box entrances. So in early 2025 I designed some rather simple little bridges with grips made of No Nails (thanks to Bristol Swifts for this idea) to make the journey easier.
This summer we spotted groups of about 12 swifts around the tower and I photographed several touching down on the louvre windows of the belfry. (Photo plus video here on YouTube).
This Autumn (2025) I made an inspection of the boxes and to my delight three nest boxes had swift feathers within the little nesting areas we had made for them. The white flecks in the feathers indicated that these were indeed the first feathers of chicks.
For 2026 we would like to install a new caller and two cameras in some of the nesting boxes and perhaps outside the window so we can see when birds enter and exit. We are trying to raise £450 to cover the cost. It will enable anyone who downloads an App (a link will be given for this if we install the cameras) to view two of the nest boxes and hopefully see our swifts rearing their young.
This is an independent voluntary project and has no links with other village volunteer groups. Please help us raise the £450 needed to move this project further forward and you can then enjoy watching the birds on your phones and tablets. I have set up a Just Giving page here. Anyone interested in our project or who can contribute a donation or perhaps help with raising funds can contact me nick.mallalieu@btinternet.com.