Thanks to funding from the Government’s Green Challenge Recovery Fund, Cheshire Wildlife Trust’s Wild Stockport team has been able to create five new swift streets across Stockport.
These enigmatic summer visitors are no doubt a familiar sight, and sound, to most Stockport residents, but swift numbers are falling quickly across the UK. A number of initiatives have been running across the country to halt these declines, many focusing on the urban spaces that swifts call home. This is where the Wild Stockport team comes in, helping Stockport join a number of swift towns, including Macclesfield, Chester, and others further afield.
Naomi Cooper, Wild Stockport Trainee, said: “A swift street is a community made up of neighbouring houses, connected in the shared goal of supporting swift colonies. It has been fantastic to see the uptake of swift streets in Stockport. Residents have been incredibly eager to help save these wonderful birds. We have focused on providing swifts with much-needed nest sites, providing an average of 10 nest boxes per street. Swifts usually nest under eaves on houses, but due to soffits and facia boards being renovated over the past couple of decades, they have seen their homes blocked up. This is thought to be one of the main drivers of declining swift numbers. So we have worked with residents to install specially designed nest boxes, giving Stockport swifts a fighting chance.