Looking back over the urban birding scene since edition 1, it is swifts that have dominated, more on them below.  I have no more news about our urban peregrine falcons.  I have seen from the numerous webcams and twitter feeds that the very numerous other sites nationwide have done extremely well.  It is very disappointing that we in Bucks have been deprived of the webcam from County Hall that we had grown to know and love. I am not exactly sure of all the reasons but know a major difficulty is that the Aylesbury pigeon racing fraternity are doing their utmost to have the County Hall birds and their platform removed and are seeking to litigate to achieve this.  In my opinion, it would help the peregrines if all who care about them could take the time to write to Bucks County Council to register their support of the project. Meanwhile, I am going to have to consider enduring another football match and making a visit to the MK Dons to see if I can what’s going on there!

Turning to the swifts, over the last 2 or 3 weeks they seem to have become very active – definitely in the north Bucks village where I live at least. Parties of what I take to be non-breeders have been zooming around in devil-may-care groups screaming their heads off.  Younger non-breeding birds appear to be checking out potential breeding sites for next year by flying up to places and briefly clinging on – if this happens at wooden nesting boxes, it can make quite a bang, leading to some people calling such birds “bangers”.  For the last few years, I have been attempting to supply BMERC with a list of exact nesting sites in Bucks.  This is something that Bucks Bird Club reporting system does not lend itself to – nest sites can be difficult to see for sure and knowing how many are in a particular building is similarly tricky. Most difficult of all, I have been reporting exact addresses e.g. “43 Acacia Avenue” which is something that would be inappropriate on Bucks Bird Club’s systems, even if marked as confidential. My purpose in recording these details is not to make life difficult for householders but to try to help swifts. If a planning application came in at a property with known swift nests, it would help to make sure that work is carried out in the off season and also would give an opportunity to have a conversation with the property owner to see if they could do anything to mitigate any potential negative impact on swifts. If anyone is able to supply any data about breeding swifts, please email me on hetwend@dircon.co.uk

The last week of June also saw the second annual “Swift Awareness Week” with over 100 events taking place nationwide.  They were an eclectic assortment – from walks and talks to garden parties and pop-up mini displays of information.  Princes Risborough was fortunate to have a talk by Andrew Lack, son of the David Lack, the eminent ornithologist from Oxford.

As I write in mid July, it will not be long before our swifts depart, so if you are lucky enough to have any near where you live, don’t forget to appreciate them while you can.

Sue Hetherington

Good Urban Birding until next month, Sue Hetherington