Tiny birds in the UK are being given free tenements from real estate development companies by installing “swift bricks” in new buildings around the country.
Over 30,000 swift bricks—essentially a normal building brick with a hollow inside—have been sold in the country, and more than 10,000 homes have been built with swift bricks incorporated into the design.
It’s bizarre the impact humanity can have on animal life. It wasn’t the sprawling British civilization that caused a 58% decline in the small migratory birds called swifts, but rather the renovation of old buildings.
In improving the energy efficiency of buildings to slow energy consumption and therefore climate change, British construction ended up sealing up all the small holes in the walls which these swifts used as nesting sites.
Now though, companies are making swift bricks which are bricks with a hole in the middle for the birds to nest in. One doesn’t need to put more than 3-4 in every wall to transform their housing project into a swift-friendly estate.
Nevertheless, some companies, like Manthorpe Building Products’ factory in Derbyshire, have already produced 20,000 swift bricks. Ibstock, another firm, has sold 7,000.
The bricks came about through brainstorming from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
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“The great advantage of swift bricks and boxes is that they can work just as well in inner city areas with very little green space as anywhere else,” Dr. Guy Anderson, the RSPB’s migratory birds program manager, told The Guardian. “Swifts can travel pretty long distances to find their insect food – all they need is a nest site.”
Swifts are amazing animals that spend 10 months of the year airborne. They do everything on the wing. To drink, they skim over rivers and lakes with their mouths open. They prey only on flying insects. To sleep, they close one eye and turn off one half of their brain. They fly all the way down to Africa before returning to the UK to nest.
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At the moment there is a petition in the UK Parliament to make swift bricks mandatory for all UK buildings, something which the government feels by default is the kind of thing that should be left up to local government councils; however it did garner 104,000 signatures.
The swift bricks are similar to the “bee bricks” which were another idea of how British housing could make room for nature, and which were ruled as mandatory by Brighton and Hove council.
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