This blog tells the story of our lengthy wait for swifts to take up residence in our nestboxes, if you want to see how we started... and more importantly, how long it took, you can read all about it here: https://cleyswifts.blogspot.com/2016/07/this-blog-chronicles-our-lengthy.html
So, we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of 'our' swifts and hope that they will arrive on their usual date which is around the 5th May-ish. Two swifts have already been seen over the village as I write today but they're probably just passing through.
During the winter I spent some time making a new box as our old Box 5 was on it's last legs. This time it's made of solid 6 x 1 pine, and totally covered in roofing felt so that hopefully it will have a few more years in it than the previous one. I even made a 'covered' porch for it this time! Getting it up to the eaves was a bit more of a problem as it was so heavy. I managed to get the brackets on the back of it in exactly the same position as the previous box so that we could use the same holes in the wall - the next problem being to get it up there on a ladder without killing ourselves in the process. Eventually I came up with the idea of a long rope attached to eye hooks in the sides of the box which was then slung over the top of our roof and the box was then hauled up from our flat roof on the other side until it was hanging in postion. Then all my other half had to do was get up the ladder with a screwdriver and fix it in position. Success!
There are other swifts in the village but ours are out on a bit of a limb, being around a quarter mile from the others, so it's more or less a new colony...which is taking quite some time to expand. We live in hope though. We have six boxes mounted on the front of the house, facing north.
Even so, they can still get very warm in the summer. We have only had three of the boxes occupied by pairs who have then bred, but all six boxes have had visitors at some stage. All have cameras in them so that we can see what's going on and how many young are being reared and all can be reached from our upstairs windows. We haven't quite worked out how to have multitudinous wires going through our upstairs rooms that wouldn't involve making yet more holes in our ancient walls, so we just put up with them for the few months that the swifts are here.
The newly fitted Box 5
During the winter we put sponges in the entrance holes to stop sparrows and other birds taking up residence in the spring (we do have dedicated sparrow and starling boxes, as well as two house martin nests that have never been used). So the sponges have come out now and we shall wait to see who turns up this year.
One more thing...anyone who is having their roof repaired, having a new-build house, or any other sort of re-construction, please think of the swifts who are rapidly running out of nesting sites. Please think about putting up nest boxes or having dedicated swift bricks built into your house or even accessible roof tiles to let the swifts in.
