A housebuilder with sites on the Isle of Wight has met its target of installing 4,000 swift nesting bricks into its homes since 2016, creating a vast number of homes for the popular aerial bird.
With swifts back in UK skies this summer, Barratt Developments, which is bringing new homes to the Isle of Wight through its Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes developments, is showing its support for the common bird – the fastest in level flight.
In partnership with the RSPB, Barratt is helping to give nature a home by supporting wildlife on its new housing developments, and building new homes for swifts, is an important goal of this partnership.
With much of the UK’s wildlife in trouble, the country’s population of swifts has also declined by 58% between 1995 and 2018, with the aerial birds being added to the UK red list of conservation concern last year.
Swifts are an urban species of bird, which use spaces in rooftops or in old buildings to make their nests. The species has seen a serious decline in numbers, in part, because modern building methods can eliminate the swifts’ access to rooftops, and old buildings have been demolished over the years, so reducing available nesting sites.
It is for this reason that Barratt has been working with the RSPB since 2016, to install special swift nesting bricks into the external walls of its new homes. And, having hit its goal of installing 4,000 swift bricks over the past 6 years, the developer has now announced a new target, which will hopefully see them installing an, even more impressive, 7,000 swift bricks by the end of 2025.
James Dunne, Barratt Developments Managing Director, Southampton Division, said:
“Swifts are such important birds, and we are really pleased with the 4,000 swift bricks we have installed so far. We must keep on working hard with the RSPB, however, to give these birds even more homes, which is why we are raising our target by another 3,000, aiming to install some 7,000 swift nesting bricks in total in our homes across the country by 2025.”
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Every year the swift helps announce the arrival of summer as they complete a 3,400-mile migration to nest and raise their young in the UK. They are the fastest bird in level flight, reaching up to 69mph, and don’t touch the ground for the first 3 years of their lives. Even after their early years, they only land to breed, continuing to eat, mate, and even sleep in the air.
A sprat to catch a mackerel ,,,but we do our bit for nature then we can build more rabbit hutches and make money
This is a very commendable idea but this year I haven’t seen a single swift in West Wight or in West London or driving to Exeter. What has happened to them all ? Hardly any swallows or house martins either.
See them every evening here in Freshwater Bay.
The only birds that i see nowadays are crows, pidgeons and gulls.
There was a robin redbreast that yous’ed to visit me every Christmas,
but, alas, not seen him for a few years now, Probably dead…. : (
We have a pair of Swallows feeding nestlings at the moment. We feel honoured.
This is great, however it would be interesting to know if any of the Barratt Homes developments on the Isle of Wight have had swift bricks installed, and if not, why not.
And just how many have been used by the birds?
Yet a nice ‘green’ boost for the company, at very little cost for robbing other wildlife of food, hedges woods and fields.
You can fool some of the people all of the time
This story melts my heart, a company is building bricks for birds…incredible
However swifts are declining because egypt trap them in high nets and eat them
So they never migrate or make it to uk shores
And thence only to arrive at their destiny,festooned with sterile looking orange-coloured monstrous eyesores and barns inhabited by corporate drones from London and the home-counties.Stick up a few boxes for em…I doubt they would have such poor taste.
Their new built homes for people are barely bigger than the ones for the swifts…..
I bet the bird nesting area is bigger than most Barratt bedrooms in a new build !
I hope the swift nests are better quality than their houses
Bloody freeloaders. Should be made to pay for their accomodation.
Except any black birds no doubt, for they are beyond reproach.
I think human-made noise is enough to send many birds packing. There’s probably a link between power tools and bird migration.
Some think 5g is destroying the migratory senses of birds, yet oddly seems to work the other way when looking at the horrendous amount of humans arriving from the same sunny destinations.
Perhaps 6g will be better.
We see brazen ‘greenwashing’ when in our faces from these despoilers of our landscapes and food production locales.
It’s a shame they don’t build adequately sized houses for humans as well.
They’ve reverted back almost 150 years by building tiny back-to-back houses at Hawthorne Meadows. And these are smaller than the old b2b houses upt norf.
Dreadful company who try and wriggle out of all commitments/promises – as in “The Road to Nowhere” which is only now being attended to after 16 years!!!!!
Oh, and they are not an Island House Builder they are a house builder who “builds” on the island.