Help us help swifts

Help us help swifts

About swifts

Swift in air

The swift is one of the last summer migrants to arrive in the UK and the first to leave. 'Screaming' calls reveal the presence of parties of swifts flying above towns and cities.

Studies of swifts have revealed some startling facts - particularly their ability to fly long distances. It is estimated that swifts fly an average daily total of 800 km - nearly 500 miles! That's about 2 million km (more than 1.24 million miles) in a lifetime!

A life on the wing

Swifts spend their life almost entirely on the wing and even feed, sleep and mate in flight. They feed exclusively on insects and only come to land when nesting.

They hunt for insects over a wide area and range of habitats from meadows, open water and over woods to the skies above towns and cities. An abundant supply of insects is critical for their survival. Parent swifts collect lots of insects to take back to their chicks - up to 1,000 at once which make a big bulge in their throat. When they have chicks to feed, swifts can gather as many as 100,000 insects a day.

'Our' swifts fly across the Sahara desert in autumn, and some even go as far south as South Africa! Others don't go quite as far and stay around central Africa. It's a long journey, but they don't hang around: one young bird left its nest in Oxford and flew all the way to Madrid in just three days!

Swifts look quite fast, as their name suggests, but they're not the fastest. That honour goes to the eider, which can fly at 47 mph (76 kph) over the sea, or a peregrine can dive at more than 112 mph (180 kph). In comparison, swifts cruise along that 14 mph (23 kph) while they're hunting for insects, or up to 25 mph (40 kph) when they're migrating. Which doesn't seem so fast after all...

Good neighbours

Sharing your house with swifts is a great privilege. They are unobtrusive when nesting and make perfect, quiet neighbours. 

Once more common nesting in cliffs and caves, swifts use roof spaces in buildings where they construct a simple nest. These can be hard to locate because swifts enter and leave quietly through a narrow opening (usually measuring 25-35 mm by 60-70 mm) and leave few, if any, droppings below the entrance.

Swifts incubate their eggs for between 19 and 25 days. For a bird that's used to flying all the time, it must be difficult for them to keep still for so long. So, to keep in shape, they perform 'press-ups' using their wings!

Identification

Swifts can be confused with three similar, but unrelated species: the swallow, house martin and sand martin. In built-up areas, the house martin is the most likely confusion species.

Last modified: 06 May 2009

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