You can’t get much wilder than spending the first three years of your life in the air. That’s what young swifts are capable of.

To start with, their life is dark and still; hatching from an egg the size of a thumbnail in May, they snuggle in a cavity nest in a building for the next few months. But by the end of July, they are peeping out of the little hole to the world below. 

Since their nests are often under roof eaves, it’s easy to imagine what they see – the villages and towns of our shared homes, just from above. 

Then, suddenly, they launch themselves out, like feathered rockets. 

They turn into adventurers, flying away from Europe, over the Sahara, towards the rainforests of Africa, a swathe of green trees humming, buzzing and singing with life. But swifts never set foot there. They spend more time airborne than any other bird on earth yet when they come home, they come home to us, returning to the exact nesting sites each year. 

The problem is, the nooks they nest in are being inadvertently blocked up by us on a national scale, through insulation and repairs. And so birds who are reliant on cavities in buildings to breed are in rapid decline. Four cavity-nesting birds – swift, house martin, starling and house sparrow – are on the Red List, which identifies the species that need ‘urgent action’. And yet the government has done nothing effective to protect these birds or their homes.  

So, in 2022, I created a national campaign, proposing a solution to the government in the form of a brick. 

It’s so simple: a ‘swift brick’ is a brick that sits flush to the wall, with a hole in it, providing nesting habitat for eight species of small urban birds. 

It would help preserve our connection with these birds, too, which is so important as they are everyone’s most accessible touch point to nature, every day, throughout the year, no matter how urban your house, no matter how old, young or mobile you are.  

With modern building materials deliberately eliminating cavities, the millions of houses being built will be devoid of these birds – unless swift bricks are included. As a biodiversity measure for the only category of wildlife directly dependent on buildings to breed, swift bricks are unique as they’re the only measure that isn’t supplementary. 

How to help swifts

1. Find out more by reading my book about the campaign, Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts.
2. Help by asking your MP to sign the Early Day Motion on ‘Securing cavity nesting habitat for swifts and other birds’ and ask them to vote in favour of the swift brick amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
3. Install swift boxes (here are our instructions on how to build a swift box).
4. Protect existing nesting sites and raise awareness within your community (as most people don’t know they have nesting swifts!).
5. Join a local swift group or start your own. Join the Swifts Local Network for tips (it’s free) by emailing the Network.

Help the swifts, because our home is their home.