Our Dashing Summer Visitors

A talk about the project to survey the local swift population

Swift above a Chiswick rooftop, image by Jon Perry

We are now in full and glorious Swift season! Come and hear the Bedford Park Festival talk about the amazing lifestyle of this superbly aerodynamic species that leads the most aerial existence of any bird on Earth.

Chiswick resident, Catherine Day, the RSPB’s first SE Region Swift Volunteer, has set up the Chiswick Swift Project to try and halt the disappearance from W4 of this much-loved, iconic summer species. She will be given a talk on Sunday 18 June at noon at St Michael and All Angels Parish Hall. There will be a retiring collection but admission is free.

She will explain how you recognize a swift, how swifts live almost entirely on the wing, why they are now Amber-listed as Birds of Conservation Concern in the UK, what we are doing to try and save our remaining W4 swifts and why providing swift nest boxes is vital to the species' survival.

She will touch on conservation initiatives in other countries and the brand-new Swift-Flowing Thames Project in London, but her main focus will be on Chiswick and our remaining Chiswick swifts. Her talk will be illustrated by photographs of swifts from egg to small, superbly-evolved flying-machine capable of travelling over two million miles in their lifetimes.

She will show some of local photographer Jon Perry’s latest photos of swifts in Chiswick this summer and will also have various types of swift nest box on display.

Come and find out more about these dashing summer visitors, how to choose and site ready-made or DIY swift nest boxes, how to take part in this summer's Big Chiswick Swift Count, and hear real-life anecdotes from people's swift nestcams in various parts of the UK.

A young swift , image by Alain Georgy

June 17, 2017