The breaking news is that, in the 4th summer of playing attraction calls, the Swifts have finally found the nest-boxes.
The tower was built in 2011 and we started playing calls with a customised bird scarer. Swifts showed some interest, but none were seen going very close to the nest-boxes.
We continued in 2012 with the same result and the bird scarer had become unreliable. We suspect the 5 watt solar panel was not quite up to the task, so we installed our own 'Box of Swifts' with a 1.5 inch car tweeter. The result was the same.
So, in 2013, after we had stumbled across the Cheng Sheng player amplifier, we installed a 20 watt solar panel to charge the battery which drove the player-amp and 2 tweeters. This resulted in Swifts actually making contact with the tower, clinging to the boxes, but still not finding any entrances. As a result of this, we made some more entrances where we thought the birds were trying to get in.
In 2014, things seemed much the same, with Swifts regularly seen near the tower, but none making an entrance. At one point the battery went flat, so we resited the solar panel so that it was never in the shade and pointing in the optimal direction (south sloping 30°).
We seemed to be making little progress, so, in mid June, I popped an email to Brian Cahalane, an attraction call playing afficionado, to ask what would he do? His reply was to start playing calls at dawn and finish at dusk.
So the timer was reset to go from 5am to 12 noon and from 5pm to 10pm - this gave 12 hours of playing, we are not confident how much longer the solar panel and battery could go in a day. We had not previously played at the ends of the day for fear of disturbing local residents.
On 26th June, Bob Tonks was cycling past the tower, and he saw a Swift exiting one of the boxes (so thank you Brian and Bob). Since then we have seen Swifts entering or leaving 15 different boxes, 12 on the front and 3 on the back. Most observation has been done on the front. We saw no Swifts entering the new entrances that we had made on the back.
We don't think there are 15 potential pairs for next year, as this was probably a small number of birds exploring their options.
One or 2 observations:
Although there are entrances at all levels on the front of the tower, Swifts only entered boxes in the top half. On the back, there is only 1 entrance in the top half, and Swifts used it. So, should we add more entrances in the top half on the back?
Another thing, on the front, the paint had peeled away from the canopies above 3 entrances, turning them white. Swifts were seen entering these 3 boxes. The statistical probability of randomly choosing 3 specific boxes turns out to be about 2% - so should we paint a few more canopies white, especially in the lower half?
For the whole of July, if one loitered near the tower one would see anything between 3 and 10 Swifts in the near vicinity with some impressive screaming displays past the face of the tower. If this is a taste of what is to come, then it should be an impressive spectacle on summer evenings in the future.
The tower was built in 2011 and we started playing calls with a customised bird scarer. Swifts showed some interest, but none were seen going very close to the nest-boxes.
We continued in 2012 with the same result and the bird scarer had become unreliable. We suspect the 5 watt solar panel was not quite up to the task, so we installed our own 'Box of Swifts' with a 1.5 inch car tweeter. The result was the same.
So, in 2013, after we had stumbled across the Cheng Sheng player amplifier, we installed a 20 watt solar panel to charge the battery which drove the player-amp and 2 tweeters. This resulted in Swifts actually making contact with the tower, clinging to the boxes, but still not finding any entrances. As a result of this, we made some more entrances where we thought the birds were trying to get in.
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| Solar panel facing south at 30° |
We seemed to be making little progress, so, in mid June, I popped an email to Brian Cahalane, an attraction call playing afficionado, to ask what would he do? His reply was to start playing calls at dawn and finish at dusk.
So the timer was reset to go from 5am to 12 noon and from 5pm to 10pm - this gave 12 hours of playing, we are not confident how much longer the solar panel and battery could go in a day. We had not previously played at the ends of the day for fear of disturbing local residents.
On 26th June, Bob Tonks was cycling past the tower, and he saw a Swift exiting one of the boxes (so thank you Brian and Bob). Since then we have seen Swifts entering or leaving 15 different boxes, 12 on the front and 3 on the back. Most observation has been done on the front. We saw no Swifts entering the new entrances that we had made on the back.
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| The only entrance in the top half of the back; visited by swifts in 2014 |
One or 2 observations:
Although there are entrances at all levels on the front of the tower, Swifts only entered boxes in the top half. On the back, there is only 1 entrance in the top half, and Swifts used it. So, should we add more entrances in the top half on the back?
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| 3 entrances with white canopies were visited by swifts in 2014 |
For the whole of July, if one loitered near the tower one would see anything between 3 and 10 Swifts in the near vicinity with some impressive screaming displays past the face of the tower. If this is a taste of what is to come, then it should be an impressive spectacle on summer evenings in the future.
