'The biggest cavities are in the hearts and skulls of politicians': What hope for the swift?
Ahead of World Swift Day and Swift Awareness Week, Octavia Pollock ponders the decision not to mandate the use of swift bricks


Summer has truly dawned when our swifts arrive and, on June 7, these avian Spitfires will be celebrated in World Swift Day, with nest-site walks from Kazakhstan to Spain. From June 28 – July 6, Swift Awareness Week UK will see events highlighting the extraordinary life cycle of these birds, which spend the vast majority of their time in the air. Nest-box footage shows young swifts doing press-ups: once fledged, they will not alight again for three years.
Yet the species is in dire straits. Swifts are dependent on crevices in buildings, now too often filled in, for their nests. A simple solution is a swift brick — widely adopted in Gibraltar with uplifting results — yet the efforts of campaigners to mandate swift bricks in new homes here were recently frustrated again with the rejection of an amendment to the planning bill.
‘It is gut-wrenching,’ says Hannah Bourne-Taylor, author of Nature Needs You. ‘Without swift bricks, birds reliant on our buildings to breed can’t stabilise their populations. We must lobby our MPs: the more people join the fight, the better chance our swifts have.’
Labour MP Barry Gardiner is urging his party to rethink: ‘Who has not marvelled at the liquidity of swifts on a summer evening? How doltish, how insensible to beauty and life must our ministers be, to block the simplest of legislative amendments that would provide the basic habitat to stop these incomparable creatures facing oblivion. When even the Home Builders Federation declares that swift bricks, which provide a home for eight species of cavity-nesting birds, pose no block to the Government’s targets, it is clear that the biggest cavities are in the hearts and skulls of politicians.’
‘Labour backed my amendment in opposition and it makes no sense at all for them to now whip against it,’ adds Zac Goldsmith. ‘If Labour rejects even this simple and painless measure, what hope is there for the rest of our rapidly declining Nature?’
For ways to help, visit the Swift Conservation website
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Octavia, Country Life's Chief Sub Editor, began her career aged six when she corrected the grammar on a fish-and-chip sign at a country fair. With a degree in History of Art and English from St Andrews University, she ventured to London with trepidation, but swiftly found her spiritual home at Country Life. She ran away to San Francisco in California in 2013, but returned in 2018 and has settled in West Sussex with her miniature poodle Tiffin. Octavia also writes for The Field and Horse & Hound and is never happier than on a horse behind hounds.
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