Most of our swifts have already left for their long winter sojourn in warmer climates.

Common swifts arrive here in the last weeks of April and early May, foraging over the reserve for flying insects, and they stay only long enough to breed. Now that the breeding season is done, they are off!

For a while, gangs of immature birds, this year’s fledglings, practise high speed flying around the houses, shrieking at the top of their voices all the while, and then they are off on an autumn migration that is probably triggered by falling flying-insect populations as the summer ends. By the end of August there are very few swifts left hunting over the reserve. 

Common swifts spend almost their entire 10 month non-breeding period in continuous flight. Nearly all the swifts returning to nest sites in and around Trowbridge next summer from their winter home in sub-Saharan Africa will have been in flight non-stop since they left us last year.