University's Swift Project takes wing

Stand in Wellington Square on a summer's evening and you can see and hear packs of swifts (Apus apus) screaming and flying low.

They are one of our favourite summer visitors travelling from sub-Saharan Africa to nest in our city buildings. They occupy the same nesting holes year on year and produce one or two chicks.

Swifts are incredibly discreet birds - they don't leave droppings and don't actually build a nest, only use existing cracks and crevices as nest holes. In Wellington Square there are nesting holes under the eaves of Rewley House as well as on a few of the tall Victorian houses surrounding the Square. Look up at the eaves of Number 11 Wellington Square (OUDCE's CPD hub) and you will notice three swift nesting boxes www.conted.ox.ac.uk/swiftsproject, the first swift boxes to be installed on the outside of any Oxford University department. Some Departmental staff with offices overlooking the square have noticed the swifts inspecting the boxes, so there's hope they will be used by the birds next year.

In Oxford as elsewhere in the country the swift population has declined dramatically. According to the British Trust for Ornithology numbers have decreased by around forty percent over the last twenty years. And the reasons for their decline? Renovating buildings with the loss of nesting sites is a main cause as well as declining insects for them to feed on.

One of the best places to see swifts in Oxford is at the University Museum of Natural History where swifts have been studied for 60 years. Stand on the lawn in front of the museum and you can see swifts going in and out of the ventilation holes in David Lack's famous Swift Tower. If you can't get to the museum to see the swifts first hand, try logging onto the museum's website www.oum.ox.ac.uk/swifts.htm and look at the live webcam of a swift nest.

So what can be done to halt the decline of these amazing birds?

The Department for Continuing Education has teamed up with the University's Estates Services Environmental Sustainability team and with Chris Mason, Swift Project Officer at Cherwell District Council.

The partnership kicked off with a lunchtime meeting featuring talks by Chris Mason from CDC, Jocelyne Hughes from the Department, and Tom Heal from Estates Services. A pdf file of their talks can be seen here: Swifts' Workshop Talks (pdf file) The slides contained in the pdf explain how to identify swifts, how to halt their decline, how university staff can record swifts and swift nests, together with the recording form. This information can be used when making building alterations and will be logged onto a database managed by Estate Services.

Back at Wellington Square Jocelyne Hughes, Chris Mason and Harriet Waters from Estates Services organised two lunchtime Swift Walk in the summer of 2014, so that people could learn how to identify swifts and to spot them entering and leaving nesting holes.

Jocelyne said, 'We walked from Rewley House to the University Museum teaching members of the group how to spot the birds and where to look for nests. It was a very positive gathering of employees from colleges and departments across the university who all want to help conserve swifts. I really felt this was the start of a practical effort across the university to do something about the plight of swifts and to change attitudes towards having birds nesting in buildings.

Jocelyne Hughes directs the Department's Postgraduate Certificate in Ecological Survey Techniques: www.conted.ox.ac.uk/est

Published 4 July 2014