It's been a while since the blog was updated - well the Swifts have been sunning themselves in Africa. Not long now until they return to our shores.

We were delighted to welcome Edward Mayer to give the Glamorgan Bird Club and Cardiff RSPB a talk on Swifts via Zoom. Here is a short summary of what proved to be an excellent talk.

"Swifts - the birds you can help!" - Edward Mayer    Tuesday 2nd March 2021

Edward Mayer give us an insight into the lives of Swifts. We had 59+ participants. We were pleased to have local some Cardiff RSPB members, as well as a member of Bejing Swifts, as participants.

Edward’s delivery was both informative and entertaining. His enthusiasm shone through. He took us through the incredible journeys that Swifts undertake each year and highlighted some of the problems that they encounter en route.

 Swifts can eat 20,000 insects per day. Indeed one factor that Edward pointed out was that as Swift numbers decline, the number of insects naturally increase and this may have contributed to the spread of certain vector borne diseases in southern Europe.  Conversely we saw large tracts of agricultural land that had had so much insecticide applied that Swifts were struggling to find any food. Another aspect he emphasised was the fact that our cities were fast becoming our “new” nature reserves. Examples of the “greening” of cities were illustrated.

 We saw many nest sites ranging from pantile roofs to UPVC guttering.  He also pictured tree nesting Swifts in Poland and the Cairngorms. His main point was however the lack of nesting places in modern buildings and the move to hermetically seal our dwellings.

 We saw several designs of both Swift box and brick. He showed us the house of Erich Kaiser, a German Swift expert, who had 90 (yes, ninety!) swift bricks installed. Also featured were the tower in Cardiff Bay and a couple of our church tower projects.

 We rounded off with various schemes that had embraced Swifts as the focus of community schemes - a model which we could well investigate.

 Many thanks Edward.