Swift poster

Here's a copy of the poster for Llanblethian. It has been created in MS Word, so can be altered easily.

Llanblethian

I visited St John's, Llanblethian yesterday. Went up the church tower which would be ideal for a swift project, however all the openings had been glazed. Whilst there, I was able to visit a couple of adjacent properties, which would be ideal for a box scheme. Indeed swifts used to nest in one of them. The owner is having the barge boards painted soon so we hope to get boxes erected then.

I have sent our swift leaflet to David Webb and he's gong to post a couple around the village.

If you could post any leaflets. please get in touch.

St Peter's RC Primary School, Cardiff

Some time ago, I spoke with Cardiff swift enthusiast, Clive Roberts.  Clive has a great understanding of the swift community within Splott, Cardiff and knows all to well about the damage that can be inflicted when refurbishment work takes place without those concerned being aware of the presence of swifts. 

Through Clive's local knowledge, we recently made contact with Willis Construction who were employed on a new development with Cadwyn Housing Association.  Although we weren't able to get any swift bricks into this particular development, Willis were interested in helping us and set up a meeting with the adjacent St Peter's RC Primary School.  This ultimately led to 7 swift boxes being put up on the school building on March 15th as can be seen below.  Thanks in particular to Sean Twamley at Willis Construction, Lyndon Watkins (Headmaster of St Peter's RC Primary School), Kath Williams at Cadwyn Housing and of course Clive for getting in touch and starting the ball rolling.

Seven swift boxes now in place kindly donated by Willis Construction

Sean Twamley (Willis Construction), Kath Williams (Cadwyn) and Lyndon Watkins (Head of St Peter's) 

Various

I visited All Saints in Barry today with a view to setting up some boxes inside the bell tower.

 

Also thanks to Jean Haslam's friend, Brian, the two faulty call systems have been mended.

Register of swift boxes in church towers

The Local Swift Network has recently set up a register of those churches that have boxes inside their towers. I've just registered our two existing schemes.

More on Trinity, Penarth

I had a nice email from Annie Irving this morning. Annie is the Penarth resident that alerted us to the presence of swifts around Trinity Church. She writes a regular blog. You might like to see her account of putting the boxes up in the church tower

https://earthstar.blog/2018/03/05/glamorgan-swift-champions/

Recent developments

A meeting was held on 22nd Feb with the RSPB and CHA to discuss the new swift tower for the Cardiff Bay barrage. Things are progressing well. The tower has been ordered, interpretation boards are in preparation and the volunteer packs are almost complete.

We erected the boxes (rather Howard erected the boxes, whilst we spectated) in Trinity tower in Penarth. Four boxes have been installed. Sadly we couldn't fit the call system at this time as the base unit was faulty. We hope to install this later in the spring.