Swift demise at Old Pennar School?

The Common Swift  - "Apus apus 01" by Paweł Kuźniar.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - 

One of the many abiding memories I have of my time as a pupil at Old Pennar Junior School is the constant swooping and screaming of the large numbers of swifts that came back to rear their young every summer. Their nests would be under the eaves of the school, seemingly all around the roof, but mainly at the top of the south and east facing walls.

At the end of "play time", when our classes all lined up in regimented order, (hands on shoulders of the person in front of you to ensure good spacing!), the swifts would swoop down between the lines and up under the eaves between the east and west wings of the school. Occasionally they would misjudge the manoeuvre and end up belly down on the tarmac yard. The swift is a supreme aviator and is not designed to be on the ground, but after some wild flapping of rigid wings,  the birds would somehow manage to get back into the air and rise to their nests above.

The swift population in the UK is on the decline. The demolition of the old Victorian Pennar School will not help their cause and destroy some of the few nesting places they still have accessible to them in Pennar. The school building are particularly suitable because of the great height of the eaves above the ground, allowing swifts to drop from their nest and gain sufficient airspeed to fly away. Swifts never nest in the eaves of single storey buildings and only in two storey buildings of adequate height. The new dwellings proposed for the site of the school do not make allowances for the accomm
odation of this rapidly dwindling summer visitor.

This is largely due to the demolition of their traditional nesting sites in the eaves of old buildings or the blocking up of ventilation holes, crevices and gaps when the roofs of houses are repaired. There is much advice about helping swifts on the websites of Swift Conservation and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). See the links below.

Swift Conservation

RSPB Swift Survey

RSPB Help Us Help Swifts

Here are some videos that will help you identify the swift and tell it apart from Swallows, House Martins and Sand Martin.

The second video below uses the word "Jizz". and explanation of this can be read here:

Swifts calling in flight.

Identifying Swallows, Martins and Swifts - from the BTO

Let me know when the first swifts appear over Pennar! 

This might be the last time you will see or hear them. 

If the school is saved, then so will the swifts.