Report information
Swifts are spend almost their entire lives flying. They feed while flying, preen while flying, gather nest material while flying, ‘sleep’ and even mate in the air. Their Latin name, Apus apus, means ‘without feet’. In fact, Swifts do have feet and sharp claws for gripping on surfaces, but they have very short legs and only land to nest and raise their young. Grounded swifts find it very difficult and sometimes impossible to take off again. The rest of their lives they are in the air!
It’s estimated that over the course of their lifetime, swifts will cover 2.8 million miles, or 4.5 million kilometres, which is equivalent to about six round trips to the Moon or 100 times round the earth.
Swifts are summer migrants which arrive here in late April and early May and they leave again in August with only a few birds still hanging around in Britain in September. Their migration is rapid and they arrive in Africa by mid-August. Once here, they respond to changes in weather and food availability and will travel long distances to find food. They feed almost exclusively on flying insects with some birds catching up to 100,000 a day when feeding their young.
Whilst in the nest the Swifts exercise their wings – because from the moment they leave the nest, they need to be able to fly and won’t land again until they breed in their fourth year. The adults leave the nest first, and then the young – which have to find their way south to Africa on their own! You just can’t help but be impressed by Swifts!
Perhaps the most famous Swift nesting site in Britain is the Museum of Natural History at Oxford University. Here the birds nest in the Museum’s spire. The site has been the subject of one of the longest studies of any species of bird, a project which was begun in 1947 by David and Elizabeth Lack. Today Roy Overall is responsible for monitoring and ringing the birds.
Inside the spire there are several floors of nest boxes, each leading via a ventilation shaft to the outside. When Brett visited the Museum, he and Roy climbed up a series of ladders to the top floor, where they found themselves in a tiny, dark chamber surrounded by more than a dozen pairs of nest boxes, many of which contained nests and incubating birds.
Elsewhere, Graham Roberts is part of the team involved with Action for Swifts. He has his own research project based on the Swift colony in his house in Portsmouth - you can see a couple of images from this colony in the gallery above..
Further Reading:
SWIFTCAM - live pictures from one of the nest sites in the spire at Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
Action for Swifts - what you can do when you encounter a Swift.
You can hear the rest of this audio report in Programme 17.