Helping Swifts at the mary robinson centre by rosie dore

This May at the Mary Robinson Centre, you may hear again the ‘screaming’ calls of a very special bird—the Common Swift.  The calls you hear may not necessarily be the sounds of the birds themselves, however!  Speakers installed on the outside of the Mary Robinson Centre building will be playing recordings of swift calls, in the hope that this will attract swifts in the area and encourage them to investigate the swift boxes—also situated high up on the outer walls of the Mary Robinson Centre building—which offer ideal spaces for the birds to build their nests.

Illustration made by Rosie Dore (www.briarhideillustration.com)

Swifts arrive in Ireland around the end of April/early May each year, after flying all the way from Africa.  They may fly an incredible 22,000km to and from Africa in a single year, one of the longest migration distances of any bird!  They travel to Europe to mate, breed and to take advantage of the rise in insect populations with the warmer months, which comprise their main food source.

​Swifts are perfectly designed for life in the air.  Except for when nesting, they generally never land; they eat, mate and even sleep while in flight!  Small flying insects like flies, mosquitoes and midges make a great meal on the wing, which they catch by swooping and snatching them from the air mid-flight.

Despite their name of ‘common’ swift, swifts are sadly not nearly so common anymore.  In the natural world, a swift would use crevices in cliffs, rock-faces and holes in old trees to build their nests.  As human habitation encroaches more and more on their environment, swifts have then instead adapted to live in the crevices of old buildings, which they normally come back to year after year to raise their young.  However, many old buildings are destroyed, with new buildings with fewer cracks and crevices built in their place.  Old buildings that remain are often renovated with their roof spaces filled in or removed; all of this meaning that when swifts arrive back in Ireland after their long journey, they discover that their former nest sites have disappeared.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, global insect populations have seen drastic declines due to a variety of factors including climate change, habitat loss and pesticide use.  This means that swifts have less food to eat than in past decades, and less to feed their young with.  A rise in more extreme weather events due to climate change could also make the long journeys that swifts undertake each year more perilous.  As a result, according to records from BirdWatch Ireland, Irish swift populations have seen an alarming decrease of 40% since 2008.

Swifts are not only a vital part of our aerial ecosystems, but are also an amazing species in their own right, and our summer skies would be so much poorer without them.  It is with thanks to Swift Conservation Ireland that the Mary Robinson Centre has been able to put these swift boxes in place, so that these incredible birds may be offered a little help in building their nests and raising their young amid a changing world.

If you would like to learn more about swifts and what can be done to help them, visit www.swiftconservation.ie.