19 June 2024

Look to the skies for Swift Awareness Week

Residents of De Beauvoir Town will be welcome to join this year’s Swift Walk to monitor these endangered birds and raise awareness of the need to maintain and create nest sites for them on local properties.

Swifts like to live in houses, barns, churches and other buildings, squeezing through tiny gaps to nest inside roofs.

As old buildings are renovated and entry points closed up, swift nest sites are fast disappearing. As a result, swifts were added to the red list of endangered birds in the 2021 UK Conservation Status Report.

On The Benyon Estate, we are doing our best to encourage swifts to nest, fitting swift boxes to properties where we can and ensuring that known nest sites are preserved when we renovate and maintain our buildings.

Mike Priaulx of the Hackney Swift Group is organising this year’s walk on 4th July – General Election day – starting from Clissold Park. Swift Awareness Week runs this year from 29th June to 7th July.

Mike said: “Anything we can do to help swifts is worthwhile, including raising awareness during Swift Awareness Week and putting up swift boxes to give them places to nest. It is also important home owners know if they have swifts nesting in their roofs and how important and endangered these birds are so as not to do anything to disturb them.”

For details on the Hackney Swift Walk email debeauvoirswifts@gmail.com

To find out more about events during Swift Awareness Week go to https://rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/news/swift-awareness-week.

Photos copyright © The Benyon Estate / De Beauvoir Swifts