To feel my spirits lift when the swifts return?

[Thesoundofscience]

I’ve just seen my first swifts of the year and it instantly lifted my mood. For me, it properly feels like the start of summer when they show up. I love watching them zooming around overhead and their nonstop screeching is the sound of summer to me!

Only two so far. I’m looking forward to watching their numbers grow over the next few weeks, and seeing how many there’ll be by the time they head off again.

Me too!

birds are amazing 👏 I have magpies visit me, they are such characters

My starlings are back. I don’t know where they hang out over the winter, but late April they come to my garden for the summer and it’s lovely to see them again. Little iridescent jet fighters.

The house martins around the corner are back too.

Swifts are marvellous - the fastest fliers in level flight in the world!

Love starlings @MoistVonL We had them nesting under our eaves for the past few years but they tended to get taken by the magpies, sadly. We didn’t have any last year.

This year we’ve been feeding the magpies @toomuchfaff I do love watching them, they are very comical, but found it very stressful when they’d target our starling babies!!

They live up to their name!

I thought this was somehow going to be about Taylor’s Eras tour. 😳

Me too! Also love hearing my first cuckoo!

Me too, but ive never met anyone else with such a fondness for them. swallows are my favourite but I love swifts too. Theyre my spirit animal 😆

Totally agree, saw my first on Wednesday and it just made my heart sing. I could not imagine a 'silent spring'.

@Thesoundofscience our resident magpies are too busy being unkind to the jackdaw to bother with the starlings.

One sits on the ridge tiles, one on the top of the willow, and they strafe the poor thing from two directions if it tries to land on the bird feeders. Handsome things, but very possessive!

The dunnocks have very kindly been helping deal with the infestation of aphids on the rose bushes. The blue tits are having a good go as well.

The carrion crows are VERY taken with the new arch between the raised beds and the rest of the garden. It makes a good surveillance point. They are the only birds the magpies are nervous of.

We’ve had blue, great, coal and long tailed tits, goldfinch and greenfinch, robins, wrens, blackbirds, chiffchaff, a heron, a jay, the ubiquitous wood pigeons and collared doves and a song thrush in the last 2 days.

It’s been wonderful to see them all from my seat under the big tree.

Did you know the Romans thought they had no legs? Because they never landed, they were thought to be totally without feet.

Their vesper flights, a sort of sleep on the wing. can be at 8,000 to 10,000 feet in the air.

@MoistVonL We don’t get so many of the smaller birds unfortunately although there were a couple of blue tits picking around among the flowers so hopefully found some insects to eat.

I learnt recently that the Latin name for swifts is Apus, meaning without feet 😊

@Yorkshiredolls seeing them
always makes me think of my dad as he once rescued one from drowning when I was a child.

We have shallows that nest every year in our vent for our building. We are 10 stories high and they come right up against the window. It's bliss.

They came late one year and I was so worried, looking our for them every day. Climate change impacts so much, it got me thinking what if the first signs we see are less little birds coming back? I obviously can't count accurately but when I look back at videos from even 8-10 years ago, I think there's definitely a decline. It's so upsetting.

YANBU, Thesoundofscience

I'm cheerful enough when it gets green again and the birds start singing in general!

MoistVonL · Today 11:57

I'm so jealous! We just have a back yard with a raised bed (terrace). We always had blackbirds nesting, two clutches a year, but I. 2023, hedge sparrows. The blackbirds had one clutch later that year, but none since.

We get pied wagtails, blue tits, starlings, a robin, (never 2 at once) gold finches and blackbirds coming for grub, along with two wood pigeons.

The magpies never land in the yard, but they do acrobatics on the gutters.

oh no! Starling babies!

The carrion crows pick snails fron the garden, fly to the loft conversion flat roof and smash them on it. They must keep special clogs for the roof because when I'm in bed I can hear them stomping above me before the Whack, Whack of the snails. They and the magpies also love flinging things out of the gutters.

Your hedge sparrows are my dunnocks. I love to hear them sing in the hawthorn that they claim from the arsey, argumentative robins from time to time. (We have three robins. They argue a lot with anyone and everyone but are utterly fearless.)

The blue tits sometimes sit in the shed watching the feeder and nipping in when the bigger birds are distracted.

I put some wool from packaging in the hedge and the crows shredded it into tiny bits all over the garden. I was initially concerned about the mess but they picked every last bit up and took it to the nest.

(The RSPB reported some concerning research about pet hair used in nests but contaminated with topical flea treatment chemicals.It seemed to possibly be linked to low hatch rates, which is why I put the sterilised wool out as an alternative)

Great idea about the wool @MoistVonL I have some left over from packaging that I don’t know what to do with.

I've just bought and put together a swift box, so will asking DH to put it up later (I'm not tall enough even with a ladder😁)

Oh me too OP! I get worried if they are late, but this year back on the 1st May. And I know Summer is ending when they leave in August. We have heard them a lot but only seen a couple.

We don't have swifts, but for us it's the same with swallows. They seemed to be a couple of weeks early this year.
Unfortunately there seem to be less of them each year. We used to have many nests, this year it looks like just 2

They are such determined little birds, migrating that far every year.....lifts my spirits when I hear them

We have lots of swifts darting about, and in the evenings, we get bats swooped around the garden.

What a nice thread - it’s reminded me to look out for them! Lovely little things, we’re lucky to share a planet with them.

Just seeing this thread made my heart sing!
Huzzah for swifts.
I love them.
I am off to sit outside with my Merlin app

I've got what I think is a blue tit box, which I put up in early February. I had it to do last year, but various injuries prevented me.

There was no activity when I left for work, 4 weeks ago.