大象传媒

Where do you raise a young family if you are a bird? Graham Roberts in Portsmouth has a passion for nest boxes so has provided plenty of homes - and he has swifts nesting in the ones in his loft. He's been monitoring them for 11 years with infrared cameras. This year there are three pairs nesting there, all with eggs. Not much is known about swifts, so Graham has a great opportunity to study them close up. Swifts spend nearly their entire life on the wing, only touching down to nest. Graham's video shows adults arriving with a food ball of insects and saliva and feeding the chicks. Young birds, about six weeks old are ungainly as they exercise their wing muscles and tail in the nest box. They do a kind of 'press up' as part of their daily routine. Adults don't look after the young after they leave the nest. It is thought that a swift travels between 1 to 3 million miles in its lifetime. Swifts are in decline owing to modern building methods that have reduced potential nest sites, so Graham encourages people to put up nest boxes. If enough people were to do it, they could make a real difference.