Guests of Summer

In 2013 we publicised Enric Fusté's research on diets for rehabilitated Swifts. Despite this, advice continues on various websites and in publications advocating diets that are harmful to Swifts.

Most recently, the otherwise highly regarded book about House Martins, Guests of Summer, by Theunis Piersma contains a short chapter on Swifts again advocating inappropriate practices.

As the book is published by the British Trust for Ornithology, they, the BTO, will do as much as they can to include in their publications, online and in print, advice not to use the information in the offending chapter.




The following words have been drafted for inclusion in all future books sold.


Guests of Summer - vital information for Swift rehabilitation

It has come to our notice that the chapter titled ‘Swifts’, pages 86-88, in the book ‘Guests of Summer’ contains much erroneous and misguided information on Swift rehabilitation and should be ignored.

Contrary to the information given, we now know that Swifts are difficult to care for and require specialist expertise.

Of special note:
Swifts are insectivorous birds, so they need to be fed only on insects. Diets based on any meat, cheese, cat food, or other non-insect food are ultimately fatal (Fusté 2013).

Swifts should not be thrown into the air; the technique for releasing a Swift safely is to find a large open space in still, fine weather, hold the bird in the palm of your hand, raise it high and it should go of its own accord.

If you find a grounded Swift and it refuses to fly, put it in a box on some fabric, and keep it quiet, warm and dark then find someone who is a specialist in this field.

There is a list of people who can rehabilitate Swifts in the UK here:
http://swift-conservation.org/SwiftFirstAid.htm

Basic advice is here:
http://actionforswifts.blogspot.co.uk/p/if-you-find-grounded-swift.html

More comprehensive advice is here:
http://www.swift-help.org/
http://www.falciotnegre.com/
http://www.commonswift.org/Hand_rearing_Swifts.html

The RSPCA or your nearest wildlife hospital may be another source of help, but make sure they know that Swifts are insectivores.

A Remarkable Escape

We often wonder at how a young Swift, never having flown before, manages to emerge from a dark nesting place, launch itself into the outside world, then navigate itself to Africa.

Judith with one of her rescued Swifts

Judith Wakelam is an experienced Swift rehabber who so far this year (2014) had taken in 24 Swifts and subsequently successfully released all of them into the wild. Her normal method of release is to take them to Newmarket Heath, a large open space with short grass, so should a released Swift come to ground, there is a high chance of retrieving it. This cautious approach has led to nearly a hundred successful releases in previous years. On her own, Judith's efforts are equivalent to the production of a substantial Swift colony.

Then came Swift number 25, weighing in at 22 grams which Judith managed to fatten up to 33gm: quite light for a Swift, but it was a small bird. Judith realised that it was near ready for release as it was as fat as larger Swifts that are ready to go. 

The bird was in a box in the study. The walls of the box were about 31cm high with a base 51cm x 42cm. The back door was open and as Judith was putting some items away in a hall cupboard she was overtaken by a bird which came out of the study, through the short hallway, into the kitchen out of the open back door, then up and away!  From where the box was situated to the back door, is approximately 17 metres as the swift flies. 

Judith's reaction was : "I was so shocked that for a few moments I couldn’t believe what I had seen.  I rushed to look in the box to confirm what I thought I had seen and yes I had been overtaken by an escaping swift!"

This anecdote illustrates that young Swifts are nowhere near as feeble and vulnerable as we, who anthropomorphise, might think.

Swift 25 on 21st August

Swift 25 on 25th August, 5 days before it escaped

What should you feed a Swift?

Any experienced Swift rehabber will tell you that giving Swifts a diet of catmeat, mealworms and the like will have disastrous consequences. Yet, intuitively, that's what most of us would do if we didn't know better. Well-meaning, but misguided, we reason that the Swift is an insectivorous bird, so it will welcome a substitute meat diet if we haven't got any insects to hand.

So, we know anecdotally that you should avoid certain foods when bringing on a Swift, but now there is scientific evidence to support the assertion. An article appearing in a recent issue of JZAR, the Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research describes the results of an experiment carried out by Enric Fusté and colleagues at the Centre de Recuperació de Fauna Selvatge de Torreferrussa in Catalunya.
The team hand-reared a total of 116 chicks which they divided into four groups, each fed a different diet:
Two “meat” diets
1. rat mince diet, a specific pathogen-free laboratory rat mince; 
2. kibble diet, a formula based on a high-protein–low-carbohydrate cat food; 
and two “insect” diets: 
3. cricket diet, based on house crickets (Acheta domesticus) and wax moth larvae (Galleria mellonella)
4. mealworm diet, based on mealworm larvae (Tenebrio molitor). All the chicks were given vitamin and other supplements to ensure that they were not put at undue risk.

The results were clear: birds fed on the meat diets (1 and 2) had significantly lower weights than those fed on diets (3 and 4). Additionally, features such as feather growth and feather quality were significantly lower in the meat-fed groups. You can download a pdf file of the complete report here. We are also fortunate that Enric Fusté is giving a talk at our Cambridge International Swift Conference next April.

The release weight of a fostered Swift

Contributed by Judith Wakelam

Weight is an important indicator of the health of a bird. When a bird is being fostered or rehabilitated, the rehabber takes its weight regularly as she feeds it up, not essaying a release until it reaches a healthy release weight, ideally around 40-45 grams, though some small Swifts can go at considerably less than this, even as light as 36 grams

50 grams is heavy for a Swift
Photo Judith Wakelam

I took delivery of a brood of three nestlings rescued from a roof in Ely last year (reported here), all of which eventually flew. The tiniest of them proved to be the one with the biggest appetite! Here it is weighing in at a colossal 50 grams. 

In the nest, chicks regularly exceed their release weight, but then they progressively lose the excess in the two or three days between the parents leaving them alone in the nest and the moment when they finally pluck up courage to launch themselves into the air. 

A story about Swifts in Uzbekistan

We know so little about what is being done - if anything - for wildlife in more distant parts of the world. This report from Uzbekistan about attempts to help grounded or injured Swifts is inspirational. We are grateful to Elena and Pavel for sending it to us.

Contributed by Elena Abdullayeva and Pavel Karabayev (edited by Jake)

Elena and Pavel

We are two young people living and working in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Our first encounter with Swifts was in 2011. We were returning home from work when we came across a grounded bird that we didn't recognize. It was beating its wings helplessly and trying to use its feet to crawl. Like most people, from childhood we had been largely unaware of wildlife, but we couldn't just leave it there. 

So we wrapped the bird in a handkerchief and took it home. Once home, we found out through the internet that our bird was a Swift (Apus apus, the Common Swift, which in Russian is called the "Black Swift").

But together with this information, there was a lot of conflicting advice and recommendations about the care and rehabilitation of grounded birds.

A juvenile that left the nest too early.

However, among a plethora of sites, some professional, some veterinary and some amateur, we found a couple of useful articles, one by a doctor of veterinary medicine, who was the Director of a specialist centre for the rescue of Swifts in Frankfurt-am-Main, Christiane Haupt; and one by a volunteer at the Centre, Hilde Matthes, about the proper care and feeding of rescued birds.

With the help of these professional recommendations, we were able to rear and safely release our grounded Swift. The moment when we saw our little Swift soar into the sky and join flocks of his fellow Swifts changed our lives forever. We had found an activity which has become for us much more than just a hobby.

This juvenile, with a broken bill,
was successfully rehabilitated.

In the following season when the Swifts arrived, we told a great number of our friends and colleagues about our passion, with the result that in 2012 we were able to rehabilitate 24 grounded Swifts.

The care and rearing of Swifts is a very demanding business. Swifts are delicate birds and need careful handling and constant attention. Careless handling, lack of attention to detail, unsuitable diet or insanitary conditions can all have disastrous consequences for the birds. The period was consequently very stressful for us but at the same time very joyful in that there is nothing more beautiful than seeing a bird that was once helpless fly from your hand and soar high into the sky.

We are now getting ready for the coming season when the Swifts arrive, which includes our decision to join the Uzbekistan Society for the Protection of Birds [the Birdlife Partner in Uzbekistan] so as to continue our work on a more serious basis than simply our own enthusiasm.

Of course, our intention in helping Swifts is not purely environmental, but is aimed at promoting a caring and compassionate attitude to all wildlife, so that young people in particular may be not only better informed, but also spiritually enriched.

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Recovery of a grounded Swift

The summer of 2012 was challenging for Swifts, many chicks died and some adults had difficulty getting enough food for themselves. This is the story of an underweight adult Swift, which, we hope, had a happy ending. It demonstrates how small an entrance an, admittedly underweight, Swift can pass through.

Contributed by Rodney Monteith

In early July I made one of my regular checks on my local colony. About 15m from the nearest nest lay a grounded swift. Once I had it in my hands I took it to an open area and gave it the opportunity to fly from a height of about 3 meters. No amount of persuasion would get it to take off so I took it with me and put it in a nest box that I had previously modified to play a call CD.

Over the next three days it consumed 45 gm of waxworms and its initial weight of 33gm rose to 35.2gm, it also went from being totally lethargic to being quite lively, so much so that it managed to escape from the nest box.  

Box designed for holding attraction call player,
then used for rehabilitation

The box was the size of typical swift box as can be seen from the photo but since I had been concealing a CD player inside I didn’t actually want any birds to be able to get in so I made the entrance hole smaller than required. 

I positioned the box on its back so that the front became a lid and as it turned out my swift was able to climb up the smooth plywood and squeeze out through the hole at the top. The hole is only  47mm x  23mm so is much smaller that recommended entrance holes so I was surprised when I found the bird huddled in the corner of the room on the floor.

The Swift having escaped!

Having recaptured the escapee I returned it to the box as it was late in the evening and could not risk trying to set it free. The next day its weight had dropped to 32.9gm but it was very lively so I took it to a large open field and it practically struggled free and flew of strongly rapidly gaining height  until it disappeared into the distance alone.

I do not know if the bird was a breeder, non breeder or visitor. Was it grounded because of exhaustion after a fight I do not know.  It did appear to be adult and two of its tail feathers were partially sheathed so this may have had an effect on its activity.

It was also much lighter in weight that I expected, based on what I have read, but it flew off even lighter than when I found it.

Story with a Happy Ending

Contributed by Jake, photos by Judith Wakelam

At the end of June, Bill Murrells and I were called to a site in Ely where a terrace of three cottages was being reroofed. On removing the tiles at the gable end, one of the workmen uncovered a nest with three young nestlings in it, which turned out to be Swifts. As the builders had done the right thing by reporting the nest, we did not wish to force them to delay the work.

Our first idea was to put up a nestbox as close to the original nest site as possible and to transfer nest and nestlings into it.  The chicks had probably not been fed for maybe twenty-four hours, something Swift chicks have evolved to handle. We decided to give it another twenty-four hours to see if the parents would take to the box. Evening and early morning vigils confirmed that the adults were not going into the box. With the benefit of hindsight, this idea may have been a mistake, as mitigation nest-boxes are known to sometimes work before breeding has started, but not afterwards.

One of the chicks on the day it was taken into care

So, I put the three nestlings in my hat and took them to Judith Wakelam, one of our star rehabbers. The nestlings began feeding almost immediately, the runt of the litter being more voracious than the other two, to the extent that eventually the runt became the biggest and heaviest of the trio!

One month later, 3 chicks ready for release

When Judith judged they were ready to be released - flight feathers fully grown, lots of "push up" exercising and the usual restlessness - she took them to the nearest open space, Newmarket Heath, close to the Racecourse, where Bill and I were privileged to assist. The method of release is important: bearing in mind how fledglings normally leave the nest - perching at the entrance or on the edge of the nest and hesitating for ages before finally taking the plunge.

An enchanted Bill Murrells with Swift ready for release

We attempted to reproduce this situation, by holding the bird aloft on the flat or back of one's hand, allowing the Swift time to adjust and to make up its mind to go. It also helps to have the bird facing into the wind to give it lift. It is considered bad practice to "throw" it into the air. Be patient, let the bird determine the pace. Of course, you can rock your hand gently from time to time, which causes the bird to spread its wings to maintain its balance, but no more than that.

Ready steady ......

Go!!!

Eventually the three birds took off. It's a breath-stopping moment when the bird leaves your hand. Will it gain height? Will it plummet to the ground? (It's because of the risk of plummeting that you stage the release in a big open space like Newmarket Heath, so that you can find it easily in the short grass). The first bird released gained height and started to circle around us at some distance. Out of nowhere, another Swift appeared and joined it. Other rehabbers have noticed how, from an apparently empty sky, Swifts will appear to accompany a lone released bird. Amazing.

The second and third fledglings eventually launched themselves into the air, and were also joined by other Swifts, once they had gained height and distance. Mission accomplished.

Lessons of the story:

1. It is a good idea if nesting Swifts (and other species) are found, before renovation work is planned.
2. Respect the builders who were good enough to report the nest they had disturbed. Do everything you can to avoid causing a delay to their work. Only use the law as the very last resort.
3. It's also good PR to keep them informed. We took photographs of the rescued birds, showing how they were progressing, and then reported back that they had been successfully released.
4. Use a competent rehabber. Swifts need specialist treatment, and there aren't many people like Judith with the skill to do the job. If you don't know a rehabber, contact us through actionforswifts@gmail.com or call 01353 740540 for help.
4. If you are launching a bird yourself (eg an adult that was simply grounded or winded), take it to an open space, hold it high on your hand, facing into the wind, and be patient: the bird will go when it's ready.
Also see our advice page: If you find a grounded swift