Swift Half SWIFTS update - 25th May 2011

• Early this morning, I uploaded clip number twenty-five onto my website, showing one of our swifts ejecting an egg from the nest - the result of an experiment I conducted after speaking to a world-reknowned expert on my favourite birds.
• I'll publish some of his findings (after over 40 years of research into swifts) tomorrow possibly - but in a nutshell....
• The seven hour fight we had in our roof was undoubtedly between two birds of the same sex.
• Fights like this are rare after eggs have been laid  -  but thats what happened in our roof.
• The intruding bird (be it male or female - I think female) fought with the same sex bird in our roof - whilst our other sex original bird seemed indifferent - this is quite normal.
• The original, indifferent, non fighter in our roof waits until the fight is over - and if their original mate is victorious, the pair re-bonds. If the intruder is victorious - a new pair (probably breeding pair) will establish itself between the victorious intruder and the original, indifferent non-fighter.
• I was of the opinion that in our case, the intruder lost out - but I couldn't be sure - I was also of the tentative opinion (more and more so) that we had at least one new swift in our roof - this seems to be the case now.
• It is Erich and my opinion now, that our original female fought with an intruding female - and the intruder won. The bird I saw leave the nest at the end of the fight looks like it was our original female now (though I suppose it could have been our original male).
• A new pair has established itself in our roof then - one of the original birds and the victorious intruder.
• The eggs were deliberately rejected (not accidentally flicked out of the way during the fight) and to prove that I went into the nest space yesterday (when both birds were out)  found and replaced an egg.
• If our original pair were still together, the egg would probably be incubated. If not, it would probably be rejected.
• The clip clearly shows one of our roosting swifts reject an old egg by picking it up in its mouth - I assume this is the victorious intruding female (or male).
• Erich (the expert) thinks that our "new pair" (original and intruder) should lay a clutch of their own in a few days - but I'm not 100% convinced of that just yet. That would mean a little more courtship than I've seen -and certainly more mating- which I've NOT seen with the "new pair".
• What I have seen though is a little courtship and mutual preening and a lot of nest-building.
• Will we get another set of eggs from our "new pair"? I hope so, but they have less then ten days to finish laying any eggs - or they and we will run out of time to successfully fledge any young (and us to film any successful fledglings).
• So..... thats the story of our roof so far and I will have to relabel my youtube clips accordingly!
• What has happened to our original swift that lost the fight? Who knows? But we still have a half dozen or so swifts screaming around the house at dusk. Maybe she (or he) is one of them?
• Is the victorious intruder actually one of last year's original pair and has simply reclaimed her (his?) territory? Who knows? Will we get any more eggs? Not unless these two birds get busy and quickly!
• Watch this space grapple fans...