Pontypool – the next Swift Friendly Town in Wales
We’ve been working with Project Nestbox to encourage swifts to nest in the area. We already have swifts visiting some areas of Torfaen and this project aims to increase the numbers of these amazing summer visitors. Swifts fly from Africa each year, arriving in April or early May and leave again in August.
They are incredibly fast and agile flyers, spending almost all of their lives on the wing – they even sleep, eat, drink and mate while flying! Swifts rely on buildings to create nests. They need to be high up so they can take off and get back into flight. Sadly, swift numbers are in decline due to loss of nesting sites and reduced numbers of insects for them to eat. This project will help to provide places for them to nest as well as encouraging more flying insects through native planting.
If you look around Pontypool Town centre you’ll see 12 new bird boxes installed ready for nesting season.
Some of these nest boxes also contain a camera, and you’ll soon be able to watch the Swifts as they come and go in real time on our website.
Our Swift Camera is set-up to capture swift activity across several bird boxes. Underneath each box is a caller device which mimics the call of a swift and encourages them to nest
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This project is kindly funded by Local Places for Nature, with specialist support from Project Nestbox.
