How can you enjoy seeing your local swifts?
Here is the very first screaming party that I saw in Hythe in 2025. A lucky 13 moment!
To get the maximum enjoyment from these amazing birds, you have a few options.
The easiest is to go to the areas where they colonise, and watch the occasional parties evolve. You need a nice sunny day ideally when you might be lucky enough to catch them at any time, but they also perform around sunset or even just after. Don’t give up until you see the bat that I told you about earlier! You don’t need binoculars, although they are helpful to spot them at a distance, or high up where they are, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
[Information on our best local spotting places where screaming parties have and can be seen will be posted here in due course.]
But if you set up a box at your house, you can watch the comings and goings too. You will have your own screaming parties. You will be able to watch them enter and leave the nest many times each day if it’s occupied. You won’t disturb them if you just sit in the garden where you can watch them. They pretty much ignore you. One came so close to me once that I felt the wind from its wings on my face. Seeing how fast they are and their manoeuvrability is incredible. If you have good camera equipment you might be able to get some photos, but it’s not easy! Watching with binoculars is equally hard unless they are in the distance. Some people set up cameras inside their box. I have also been able to watch a morning screaming party while laying in my bed! They would fly right at my window near to my nesting box and at the last moment shoot up over the roof. They are very aware of their surroundings and rarely hit anything including the many telephone wires we have around our town houses.
Lastly, you might simply keep your ears to the ground while around town and you may hear a bunch of birds screaming past you overhead. They are reminiscent of jet planes that come out of nowhere and by the time you realise what’s happened, they’ve gone. But if you’re lucky, there might be another lap around the circuit! Just pause and wait, because it’s very likely that they will come back for the full grand prix experience, or do a victory lap around the exact same track on another day.
Put May, June and July in your diary!
Please let us know if you go to any parties!
This way to ➡️ 6. Swift action
