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Swift City

Oxford to become England’s first ‘Swift City’
Swift City

The RSPB and its partners have been granted £83,700 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for a new Oxford ‘Swift City’. The two-year project will maintain current swift nesting sites in the city and add 300 further sites onto new and existing buildings in a bid to boost the population.

Swift decline

This iconic aerial migrant bird, which lands only to breed and can fly at least 560 miles a day gathering food during the breeding season, nests almost exclusively in urban areas. But the birds face an uncertain future: numbers in the UK have fallen by 38% since 1994.

One possible cause of the swifts’ decline may be losses of nesting sites, as old buildings are renovated and new builds do not include spaces for them to nest. To address this, the project will research Oxford’s present swift populations and nest sites, and use this information to work closely with builders and planners to maintain them and also incorporate new sites into the city’s infrastructure.

Oxford swifts

Oxford has a long scientific and cultural association with swifts. The swift colony nesting at the Oxford University Natural History Museum has been intensively studied by the Edward Grey Institute of Ornithology since 1948 – one of the longest continuous studies of a single bird species in the world.

The Oxford community will be vital to the success of the project, and volunteers will be needed to help monitor swift numbers. Wildflower plots will be planted in green spaces and gardens to increase public awareness of the need to rebuild food-webs across habitats, and a showpiece ‘Swift Tower’ is planned that will combine new nest sites with a public arts project.

‘Like much urban wildlife, swifts are under pressure in the UK. HLF funding of this exciting project gives us the opportunity to study swift nesting and feeding habits more closely and to involve the local community to monitor and protect them. We hope that as well as improving the outlook for swifts, lessons will be learnt which can be applied to species recovery plans for other urban wildlife.’

CHARLOTTE KINNEAR
Local RSPB conservation officer

Better breeding prospects

Starting in January 2017, the RSPB will work alongside partners including Oxford University, The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford City Council, Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre, Environment Resources Management and the local Wildlife Trust to improve the breeding prospects of swifts in the city.

‘We already provide an extensive educational programme for local schools and are very much looking forward to extending this work with the Swift City project. It will also enable us to introduce more children to our resident swifts during the summer!’

CHRIS JARVIS
Education Officer at The Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Click here for more on the RSPB’s work to protect birds and their habitats.

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