Swift

Life on the wing

These incredible birds spend their entire lives in the air, eating, sleeping, mating, and flying thousands of miles without landing.  This includes their incredible hibernation flight from Africa to the UK, over 5,000 km.  Tired upon arrival, they need a home to thrive as a species.

Midhurst and surrounding areas like Tillington, Lodsworth, and Easebourne once had substantial Swift populations but these have now largely disappeared. 

Swifts mate for life and are deeply faithful to their nest holes, so they can be difficult to attract into new nest boxes. The chances are better if Swifts are already nesting in the vicinity. Time and patience are needed; success may well not come in the first or even second year.

Swift Facts

Swifts spend the winter in Africa but travel to Britain every year in April and May.

Swifts feast on small flying insects caught on the wing. Insects collect in a special pouch at the back of the swift’s throat, where they are bound together by saliva until they form a kind of pellet known as a bolus, which can be regurgitated and fed to chicks. One single bolus can contain over 300 insects.

Up in the air

The swifts you may see in spring have been flying without cease ever since the moment they launched into the air from the safe, dark nest in which they hatched. From there, they straightaway headed south for Africa: snapping up airborne insects, sipping water from lakes on the wing, preening their feathers in elegant aerial manoeuvres, and spiralling up into the sky at dusk to sleep and orient themselves. Flying is simply what a swift does, all of the time, unless grounded by misfortune— most likely in the shape of persistent, torrential rain. However, their return to the part of the world in which they hatched is purposeful.

They come to seek a nest and a mate, and to establish their place within the loose, colonial territories that swifts form during the breeding season. Finding a nesting hole takes time, but they have an instinct for suitable places and are often attracted by calls from their own kind. Swifts prefer to nest high up, under the eaves of buildings or in crevices in the masonry, searching for an entrance hole to a hidden space where they can make their dish-like nest of feathers, tree seeds, and other materials blown up into the air and glued together with saliva.

How to identify a Swift

They are easy to spot as they look like an arrow whirling through the sky, and often fly in groups.

The swift is dark brown all over, often appearing black against the sky, with a small, pale patch on its throat. They’re larger than swallows and martins, with long, curving wings that make them look a bit like a boomerang when in the air. Swifts are very sociable and can often be spotted in groups wheeling over roofs and calling to each other with high-pitched screams. Unlike swallows and martins, swifts are almost never seen perching. 

Key features to tell a swift from a swallow or martin are the dark underside (swallows and martins have pale bellies), the proportionately longer wings, and the screaming call.