The wet and cool summer made this a difficult year for breeding Swifts. Cold northerly winds appeared to hold back their arrival and the 1st swift was spotted over Henfield on 7th May – the latest ever recorded date for Henfield Birdwatch.
In general there were fewer Swifts screaming round the village than previous years. The nest at Southdown Galleries was not used for the first time since 2020.
The adults had to spend a lot of time away from the nests searching for enough insect food for their young. This means that the chicks received less food and will have affected their breeding success in three ways; fewer eggs may be laid, it can slow down chicks’ development and may well result in the death of chicks. Nigel and I found an underweight grounded Swiftlet on our lawn in the middle of July which had probably jumped out of its nest because it was hungry.
This year Tony Fitzgerald became involved in checking for active nests and then keeping an eye on those nests. I would normally expect to see two Swiftlets looking out of the boxes as they get ready to fledge but this year we only saw one per active box.
However, there is some good news about a nest box that was put up in Broomfield Road in 2019; last year a pair of Swifts had flown past the box on a number of occasions so we knew that they were interested in the situation of the box. This year the Swifts were back and it became obvious in July that they were feeding young.
This year we had 16 active nests which produced 13 fledglings. This is fewer than 2023 but, hopefully 2025 will have more settled weather and this figure will increase.
Debbie Colgate and Tony Fitzgerald