They can eat, sleep and breed in mid-air, fly an average of 500 miles every day and weigh around the same as a Cadbury’s Creme Egg - swifts really are the superheroes of the bird world!
Now a new project to find out where they forage in Northern Ireland has taken flight, thanks to a partnership between RSPB Northern Ireland, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the Northern Ireland Swift Group. In a first for conservation science in Northern Ireland, dozens of swifts will be fitted with tiny GPS ‘backpacks’ in a bid to shed light on key feeding areas.
Every year, swifts return to breeding sites within the UK and Ireland from their African wintering grounds. They are acrobatic masters, swooping high through the sky with their distinctive scythe-shaped wings.
Swifts nest in the cracks and crevices of buildings, high up in the eaves. They pair for life, meeting up each spring at the same nest site which is ‘renovated’ and reused year after year. Unfortunately, as old buildings are fixed up or demolished, these sites are often lost and it can be difficult for a displaced pair to find a new site in time to lay eggs and raise a brood before heading back to warmer climes in August.
The UK swift population has declined dramatically in recent years and, as a result, the species has been placed on the Amber List of birds of conservation concern.
In recent years RSPB NI has been surveying swifts, primarily in south Belfast, to identify the areas they favour. Using this information, we’ve been working with communities and industry to try and protect nest sites. For example, new houses in The Village area have been constructed with ‘swift bricks’ built into the design – these special bricks contain nesting chambers that the birds can use.
However, because swifts may feed many miles away from where they nest, it’s vital that these feeding sites are protected too.
Today (30 June) experts will be safely capturing a number of swifts, some of which were previously tagged as part of a BTO and NI Swift Group migration study, and fitting them with miniature tracking devices, which weigh less than one gram.
Being used for the first time in Ireland, and building on work carried out by the BTO over the previous two summers, these will record the locations of the swifts at approximately hourly intervals with an accuracy of just a few metres, revealing the feeding behaviour of nesting swifts in unprecedented detail.
We hope to learn where nesting birds from specific colonies forage when they leave the nest, including differences in behaviour between swifts nesting in highly urban and more rurally-located colonies. After recovering tags the team at RSPB NI will be able to see, on screen, where the tagged birds spent each hour of the last few days – offering a unique insight into their behaviour. It is hoped that this joint initiative will run over several years and that the data collected will be invaluable in protecting one of the most special and threatened migratory species to its home here.