A pair at last

Well, I’m happy to say that the singles in  Box 1 and Box 3 seem to have got together at last and have now taken up permanent residence in Box 3. Nest building is under way and they are bringing in more feathers and spending some time in the box during the daytime.

The nest itself is rather interesting, and I thought you’d like to see this:

Apart from feathers a lot of it seems to be made up of grass or reeds. We’ve not seen this before. No sparrows have entered the box either, as the swifts are there quite a lot of the time. So there must be quite a bit of grass floating about in the air!

So sadly this year we are down to just one pair of swifts, from what were three pairs a couple of years ago. We just hope that with the second and third waves we might get some prospectors for next year.. Here they are in their grassy nest!