Common Swifts spend more time airborne than any other UK bird, yet when they come home, they come home to us. Diving and spiralling for 60 million years, they adapted from nesting in tall trees to our buildings when we cut primal forests down. Our home is their home and we have welcomed them.
I know this because since I launched my campaign, The Feather Speech, asking the government to mandate swift bricks on their behalf, hundreds of strangers have told me the same narrative: as children we became skywatchers in early May, holding our breath until the first swifts returned, bringing summer with them. We gasped at these feathered acrobats, but over the years fewer swifts returned. Now we're afraid of a summer silent of their screams. There is love, loss and a fear of losing swifts forever in this collective national portrait.
This is my experience too, my love cemented by a single swift whom I rescued, hand-raised and released (immortalised in my nature memoir, Fledgling). My loyalty to that one bird spurred me to act for its kind, launching a national conservation campaign unclothed, painted from neck to toe in feathers opening a petition (because how else does a nobody collect 100,000 signatures to warrant a parliamentary debate?).
We did it – 109,896 people signed, securing a parliamentary debate that saw unanimous support from cross-party MPs, and led Lord Zac Goldsmith to commit to helping me secure the aim. Yet 15 months later, I am still embroiled, the government and housebuilders showing an alarming amount of resistance to the proposal to add a requirement for swift bricks to Building Regulations. It's not rocket science. It's not radical (the Netherlands has done exactly this) and it's not even controversial, being described by scientists, conservationists, politicians and government advisors as a 'no brainer'.
Fewer cavities are available for Common Swifts to nest in as old properties are repaired and holes blocked up. Making swift bricks mandatory in new-build housing would go some way to solving the problem (Richard Castell).
Emptying skies
I find myself muttering out loud that "it shouldn't be this hard," especially when the facts spell out a very real nightmare: according to the BTO, between 1995 and 2020 the UK breeding population of Common Swift declined by 60%, leaving an estimated total of 59,000 pairs. Today the estimate is fewer than 50,000 pairs, with the population trend predicted to carry on plummeting. Swifts are not alone in their decline, joining three other urban cavity-nesting species on the Red List of highest conservation concern – House Martin, House Sparrow and Common Starling. These birds are united in their plight through the national-scale loss of natural cavities in buildings that are being blocked or destroyed at an increasing rate thanks to demolition, countless home repairs and nationwide insulation measures. Swift bricks provide nesting habitat for all of them.
When people tell me to give up, I am reminded of the poet Mary Oliver's words: 'Tell me, what do you intend to do with your one and precious life?' My answer: 'save swifts.' As the months pass, the campaign only becomes more urgent. Without swift bricks there is no safe, permanent nesting habitat for swifts anywhere in Britain, and there never will be as new buildings are built to prevent cavities. Yes, insect decline is a huge problem, but if the birds can't breed here then they can't exist here. I'm not just fighting for their existence. Swift bricks create a legacy of connection between us and the birds whose flight joins up the gasps of old and young, of past and present, and injects a dose of wonder into the heart of urban environments.
The Feather Speech has become a campaign that belongs to everyone who is a part of it. I was incredibly touched that it won Campaign of the Year – thank you so much to those who voted. Passion is a superpower. Together we must continue to unite for our closest wild neighbours. Please write to Housing Minister Lee Rowley MP and Secretary of State Michael Gove MP, asking them to mandate swift bricks. Tell them why you care. Write too, to Matthew Pennycook MP, asking for Labour to add swift bricks into their manifesto.
- This column first appeared in the March 2024 edition of Birdwatch. To be the first to read the magazine each month, take out a subscription to Birdwatch, or get the magazine alongside your bird news by subscribing to either Bird News Ultimate (paper magazine) or Bird News Ultimate Plus (digital access).
