best advice to give to home owners?

[Mike Priaulx]

Hi Louise (Bolton & Bury Swifts)/ all,

I have visited the site in Harrow I mentioned two weeks ago and we've installed boxes now, a mixture of Action for Swifts Model 30, and Peak Boxes Gen #2 boxes.

The new Gen #2 boxes are compact and lightweight, so easier to install I think than the previous plywood boxes, and should have a long lifetime. We added a screw through the back of the box to be on the safe side.

The council had re-roofed two houses and had completely sealed the open eaves of one house with a (not attractive!) uPVC boxed soffit, and the other house still looked to have open eaves but a membrane installed to stop birds getting in,

(as I've mentioned before this is not a legal requirement, but just the modern way)

so my experience would be to assume that all nest sites will be blocked unless you know otherwise.

Luckily in this case the residents were aware and got in touch (I went last summer and the local nest sites are very much concentrated in these two houses, for some reason),

so hopefully the 11 boxes (16 nest spaces) plus playing calls will be enough to save the colony.

(Cutting holes in the soffit boards would be another option but was just impossible to organise as I'm so far away.)

One house had an amazing 10 (estimated) nest sites, which would have just gone if no-one was paying attention so it shows how easily colonies can be lost.

So we need to keep on raising awareness :-)

All the best,

Mike

+++

 

Louise at Bolton and Bury Swifts <super...@outlook.com>: Mar 04 03:12PM

Hi Mike,

 

When you manage to get over there, I'd be really interested to hear what you find. As you know I do quite a bit of work with social housing contractors and I'm keen to learn more about how different methods of works affect the swifts access.

 

Thanks,

Louise

 

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________________________________

From: 'Mike Priaulx' via swiftslocalnetwork <swiftsloc...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2026 1:53:58 PM

To: Digest recipients <swiftsloc...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [SLN] best advice to give to home owners?

 

Hi Louise,

 

I'm not sure exactly what the council have done, but a similar home with nest sites on the same estate was re-roofed, and the nest sites turned out to be blocked

 

(although luckily new nesting places seemed to be found in adjacent houses, in that case).

 

[Louise at Bolton and Bury Swifts]

Hi Mike & All,

Really hope the mitigation works. Its stressful to find the eaves sealed up but at least these boxes are in place.

I am working currently with three different contractors, one is BAAS - contractors to social housing and they are sealing in eaves at a swift colony. However, they are going to be including a high number of soffit boxes from Action for Swifts. Which I am thrilled about. 

The other two contractors are putting external boxes up and their houses are amongst colonies too but not accommodating any Swifts; they sealed in the eaves 20 years ago with plastic. Now finally they are adding some mitigation at our request.

Best Wishes,

Louise

 

     

 

Bolton & Bury Swifts

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From: 'Mike Priaulx' via swiftslocalnetwork <swiftsloc...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2026 8:40:50 PM

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[Tony Croft]

👍

Best Regards
Tony

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[Laurinda Luffman]

Fantastic work, Louise!!

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