In the Autumn of 2019 the Reading Room Committee was approached by one of our members, Bill Hancock who is aiming to make Southwold the ‘swift capital of the East coast’, see if we would be interested in having swift boxes installed under the eaves of the building.
Following generous sponsorship by Reading Room members, four boxes were purchased. These had been made by a local charity Special Objectives for the Locally Disabled (SOLD)
https://www.soldstudio.co.uk/
These boxes have recently been installed, for free by Duncans builders, on the southern wall of the Reading Room. Our swift boxes are a unique design as they have an internal nest form and the two end ones have a side entrance.
There are around 60 active swift nesting sites in the local area and we now await the arrival of migrating swifts later in the year and hope that our boxes will prove to be an attractive new nest site. We may have to wait a year or two for the boxes to be occupied as swifts return to the same nest site each year and so new arrivals this year may not spot our boxes immediately.
A few swift facts, courtesy of Bill Hancock:
Population is down of 50% over the last 2 decades and there are only an estimated 85,000 pairs left in the UK.
Amber listed, i.e. of conservation concern, through loss of nesting sites with roofs being bird proofed after replacement and repairs as are many new builds.
Young Swiftlets mature after 3 years on the wing and return to where they fledged and so will see swift boxes as a natural home and readily occupy them.
