Installation of the swift boxes in the tower.
Happily, St John’s tower is a summertime home to some extremely welcome feathered guests – a wonderful and iconic species of bird that is synonymous with urban settings, buildings and summer skylines…
This follows the experimental installation of swift boxes behind the belfry lattice work of the church’s tower to provide vital long-term nesting sites for swifts. These extraordinary birds visit the UK each summer to breed and are highly deserving recipients of urban nature conservation projects like this.
Very sadly, numbers of swift are in year-on-year decline. Reasons for this are complex but what is clear is that these iconic birds need long-term nesting sites to ensure their survival.
At St John’s, 12 swift boxes were visited in 2017 and forty-eight more boxes were then installed ready for 2018 with the result being 24 chicks from 13 pairs of visiting swifts. In 2019, 41 chicks from 19 pairs were ringed from the swift boxes at St John’s.
This continuing project at St John’s – part of an on-going commitment to wildlife and Eco Church – is now accessible for all to enjoy via the church’s very own swift watch video feeds, which will capture the goings-on within four of the swift boxes.