SCREAMING FOR HELP

 

It’s early May and the swifts are back, scything noisily through our skies in celebration of completing their ten thousand mile non-stop round trip from central Africa.
 

The swift’s dark winged silhouettes sweep above our streets, bringing happiness to us birders, and celebrated in poetry and prose because swifts are given the accolade of bringing the summer with them. No wonder we love ‘em!

    we're hoping that one day soon, the swifts will nest in the towers of our Minster and the blue sky will be alive again

The rooftops of Wimborne Minster and other Dorset towns and villages provide them with homes, the swift pairs travelling north together, even mating on the wing and never touching down until they reach last year’s nest site. Their homes are shared with us, the cracks and crevices in our ancient buildings.

Swifts enjoy each others company, so they form nesting colonies, their evenings being ‘party time’ as they call to each other, their screaming evening flights brightening our summer skies.

Flying at a steady sixty plus miles an hour, feeding on insects as they travel, they will have flown millions of miles in their lifetime, for a swift’s average life-span is nine years and if all goes well, they will raise two to three young each year in their cramped quarters.

Egg laying, hatching and fledging takes about seven weeks and when these young leave the nest, they indulge in a vital stage in their future as they prospect our roof-tops and swift boxes for vacant des.res.

Then they head off for their winter quarters south of the Equator, flying more than 800kms a day during their migration. Impressive birds!

They cross the Sahara before reaching the lush forests of central Africa, and thanks to satellite tracking technology, these maps show the exact location of their travels. The other map shows the common swifts worldwide distribution. 

red depicts the swifts breeding range, blue their winter quarters

 

In preparation for their breeding years, swifts will usually return to their natal grounds in their second year of life, when they can start looking for suitable breeding sites and mates.

By the time they return to breed in Dorset, typically at four years old, these young birds will have already flown a hardly believable 300,000 miles, yes, that far, never touching the ground, kept aloft and even sleeping on their long, scimitar wings. 

They are such amazing birds that they give us every reason to want to try to help them survive and prosper. And they certainly need our help. During the last twenty seven years, swift numbers in the UK have declined by 66% and sadly, Wimborne is one of those towns suffering these steep declines.

Swifts have now been added to the Red List of conservation concern and the British Trust for Ornithology have been researching the reasons, citing poor summer weather, a decline in insect food...

... and lack of nesting sites as the major causes.

Sadly, we can do nothing about our poor summer
weather, but we can certainly help provide an increase in invertebrate prey by creating wildlife friendly gardens and planting insect attracting flowers and shrubs.

Even better, we can certainly provide more nest sites and us Swift Champions are installing nesting boxes across towns, along with ‘calling boxes’ that cry out to attract the swifts to vacant nest sites. And they work a treat!

As an example, I have a friend and fellow swift lover in nearby Ringwood, living in a normal two story house, though actually far from ‘normal’ because John's created a wildlife haven.  

His walls are now covered in a virtual city of nest boxes, including many swift boxes, and when he installed them one late summer and added a swift calling box, the swifts colonised within a few days, and since then he’s usually attracted up to seven breeding pairs.

He has a battle with sparrows and starlings that try to take over the boxes for their own nests, so he keeps the box entrances covered until the 1st May. This gives the swifts a chance of winning their nest sites back when they return from Africa.

John’s boxes are installed at about seventeen feet high, giving the young swifts a safe drop out of the nest of at least three metres so they don’t crash into the ground on their first flight. John’s project has been a great success for several years now and there’s no reason why other swift lovers like us couldn’t be equally successful.

Many Dorset swift initiatives are in full swing now, so please get in touch with our champions if you wish to help swifts by having a swift box installed on your property, especially if you have large overhanging eaves.

we're hoping that we'll be allowed to fix swift boxes on our Town Hall this spring

 

If your home looks suitable, us champions would love to have a chat, so do please get in touch with your nearest Swift Group, listed below, and let’s see what we can do. Alternatively, if your house isn’t suitable but you can help with surveys, or other group tasks, do drop us a line:

Wimborne Swifts - WIMBORNESWIFTS@GMAIL.COM CHOG Swifts - swifts@chog.org.uk
 

With your help, there is every hope that within a year or two, our Dorset streets will get increasingly noisy as these charismatic birds take part in their screaming parties and fill our skies with their remarkable flights of celebration. 

These champions of the sky are looking at us to help them, so please do what you can right now.
                                                                    

                                                                        ---
I have extracted these pics from my office 'magic-box' and am unable to credit these skillful photographers, so I hope they appreciate that this blog has simply been created in the hope of helping our beleaguered swifts recover and fill our skies with joy.
So thank you all. Hugh Miles.
 

                     CELEBRATING SPRING

Robins have become the nation’s favourite winter bird, especially at Christmas and they're often decorated with snow. But our delightfully tame robin says there’s light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not a train coming. No, surprise surprise, it’s the sun and Spring is approaching fast!

And being early February, there are numerous signs of seasonal change and todays’ happy snaps in our Dorset garden prove it’s not just a figment of our imagination.

First to come is the witch-hazel, related to the word witch, and they certainly bring lots of magic to our garden. Often called the ‘Winterbloom’ in North America, from where these shrubs originate, they usually start flowering at Christmas in our sheltered patch in southern England.

The witches beautiful scent fills the air and it seems this attracts lots of small insects, for this diminutive goldcrest, Britain’s smallest bird, spends hours gleaning goodies from the blooms. I must try to capture a better photo as it dodges through the flowers on blurred wings.
 

 

 

 

Snowdrops are a favourite harbinger of spring and what a relief it is to see them after yet another dark and wet winter. You probably noticed! There were so many dull, damp days that it was difficult to avoid becoming depressed, for I don’t remember ever suffering a season when so many named storms rushed past.

But the sun is shining now and our snowdrops are forcing their way through last Autumn’s leaf litter and making us smile.

Known since the earliest times and described by a Greek author in the fourth century, snow drops were named Galanthus in 1753 and have become celebrated for welcoming happier days ahead.

Thought to be a British native wild flower, or brought to us by the Romans, they were most likely introduced from Europe in the early 16th century and naturalised by 1770.

Tourists flock in their thousands to the best displays in large woodland gardens, but fanatical collectors, called ‘Galanthaholics’, specialise in cultivating individual plants that change hands for eye-watering amounts of money.

As February days lengthen, our garden begins to glow with the blooms of the many camellias that we’ve planted during the more than four decades we've lived here.

 

 

They are plants that reward us with their beautiful blooms for nearly six months every year and they thrive in our damp, shady soil,  threatening to join the surrounding trees up in the sky. We love 'em.

 

 

 

Another shrub that’s thriving and threatening to become a tree is our delightful daphne, not just a joy to the eye but the nose too because their strong scent fills the top of the garden with heavenly delight.

What’s more, their blooms provide an early meal for bumble bees that venture out on any rare days of sunshine. 

It's difficult to believe that such an apparently delicate plant is used for  paper making in Nepal and Bhutan, and harvested sustainably too.


 

 

 

Crocuses are beginning to push up through our soggy wildflower meadow, and in the borders, Sue’s carefully tended hellebores are blooming wonderful, glowing in the soft spring sunshine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hellebore is an ancient Greek word and their popular names include Winter Rose and Christmas Rose, and even though they are not related to roses, they do provide nectar for early bees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The memorable day last year when the frogs started to spawn in our marsh was February 5th, so our local buzzard provided an extraordinary example of a well developed biological clock, for it arrived at breakfast time on the very same day this year. It sat for half an hour above the spot, looking down at the spawning site in the hope of an early meal.

Yes, frogs are on a buzzards menu, the meat scrapped off the skin high up on oak tree branches.

Our local bird returned again at lunch time before leaving after another long and fruitless wait.


So far we’ve seen only one or two frogs, so are concerned that they are not going to show. And that would be very disappointing, given that we have enjoyed as many as forty frolicking in their spawn in previous years.

Many years ago, the garden was merely a heathland clearing beside our 18th Century cob cottage, so it’s no surprise that the spiky gorse springs up randomly wherever there are sandy patches. We delight in their colourful scented flowers and so do the early season insects.

Despite the grotty weather, our birds are starting to sing, most notably two song thrushes that are announcing their claim for territories at dawn every day. Loudly!

Several robins are also staking their claims and our tame lady is also adding a few notes between her frequent hand outs. Yes, the British Trust for Ornithology tell me that lady robins do sing too. And how do I know she’s a female? Well, she told me!

She is very talkative, always answering my greetings, and if she’s hungry, which is often, she flies up to my office window to get noticed, and if I’m not paying attention, she taps on the window. She’s certainly got Sue and I well trained.

Feeling her delicate, cold, wet feet on my hand is a delight, especially as it took me the best part of three months to entice my beautiful lady to trust me so closely. And there’s no better feeling than winning the trust of wildlife, especially in our personal refuge from the outside world, a refuge for both us and our wildlife.

All these happy snaps were taken during this past week and we live in hope that the sun shines on us more often this year!  Then we can all celebrate our spring and the joy of the seasons ahead.     

Halleluiah to that, with our birds adding the Chorus!