Swift Half SWIFTS update - 27th July 2011

• I've just uploaded clip number fifty-four onto the website, recorded today (Wednesday 27th July) at around 1230hrs BST and uploaded it at around 1700hrs BST on the same day.
• We still have both nestlings in the roof  -  but only for days now (I think the eldest will leave on Sunday followed by its sibling on Monday - but it could be earlier than that....)
• This clip, a short clip, shows one of our nestlings (the youngest I think, though its almost impossible to tell) doing a gurt big press up in the nest. Its sibling is still around (out of shot, near the entrance), but won't be for much longer.
• Both seem anxious to hit the skies very soon indeed....
• Bear in mind that unlike almost all other species of birds, swifts cannot get on a perch or cliff ledge and really flap their wings repetitively with vigour - they simply haven't got enough space in the nest. Many species of birds even have wee practice flights (maybe just raising themself off their perch or ledge whilst exercising their wings in ample space) - swifts can't do that.
• When a fledgling swift launches out of its nest space (where it hatched six weeks prior), it is reliant on the fact that its development (regular food from parents), exercising (press ups in a confined nest spot) and instinct (not to mention weather!) is enough to get it airborne and keep it airborne - from that moment on, for maybe three years.
• It of course has to learn how to hunt for itself immediately also (it won't get taught), how to sleep on the wing, how to keep on the wing, how to navigate to sub-Saharan Africa on its own (it may not be able to follow others) when to begin to move south - and finally, how to return to the very same spot (our roof) in which it was born, maybe two or three years beforehand.
• Imagine if at 18 years old (having spent that time doing most of your physical development in a dark box, just bigger than yourself at 18, getting hand fed by your parents) you then were told to leave - for good. But you'd only be ok if you left the box and ran, running continuously for three years (bearing in mind you hadn't even begun to walk yet, let alone ran anywhere), learning where food came from as you ran, eating and washing as you ran - even sleeping as you ran - you had to keep running, or you'd die. You also were obliged to run to South Africa in a month or two, keep running around South Africa (eating, washing, sleeping as you ran) and in two or three years time, you had to return to the same box you left behind in the UK with no maps or sat navs to guide you.
• Easy eh?
• Swifts make it look that way.....
• We congratulate ourselves on our technology - sat navs, spaceships etc...
• I sometimes think though that we have NOTHING on nature!