And we are a-go for #swift season 2024!! Our male just arrived home from migration. He's at least 11 yrs old + this is his 9th season with us. He's caused a lot of drama in that time - cheating, divorce, rekindled bonds, infanticide. Let's see what this summer brings!

The folly of planting rows of spruce on a riverbank. Shallow roots & soft ground sees the whole lot brought down in one go. This on a pearl mussel river in Co. Cork.

This year our tagged #seabirds are named after / by @NewBedford_MA schools! Here are some of our long distance travelers so far. Great shearwaters Hathaway hanging out on the east side of the Atlantic and Sailor foraging on the Grand Banks! #trackseabirds #birds #BirdsOfTwitter

In this long-term project, by ensuring each bird in this colony is individually marked and easily identified via nestcam without further disturbance, as well as DNA sampled, the potential for close study on the survival, social dynamics and breeding ecology of swifts is huge! 3/3

I've also ringed 70 #swift chicks in the colony this year. Most of the chicks ringed here we never hear from again, but so far around 5% of them have returned to join the colony as adults (such as FU in the last pic), which is a higher rate than observed elsewhere. 2/3

A very busy month ringing #swifts at a Fermanagh colony for a new @_BTO RAS (annual adult survival) study. Such gorgeous birds: 45 adults ringed so far using a targeted, methodical approach. All boxes have nest cameras - great for reading the ring codes in years to come. 1/3

Travelling between Cork and Fermanagh to do some work at a swift colony, I spotted the extraordinary #swift mural by @jameskirwanart in Mountmellick. Wowza!!

Getting fed by their mammy this morning ☺️ Still at this stage the food is shared between the two chicks at each feeding event, but that won't last long now. As soon as a young #swift has a mouth big enough to envelop its parent's head, it will take the whole bolus at once.

Day 41: The young swifts have grown quickly, regularly and carefully fed by their parents. They have begun to grow downy feathers (so are better at thermoregulating), and the parents have begun to leave them unattended for short periods.

Birds expertly handled and ringed under licence of course. If you are at a beach and see ringed plovers, oystercatchers or common sandpipers making a lot of noise and approaching you, you are close to their chicks and the best plan is to put any dogs on a lead and move away.

A wonderful night touring the beaches of the Beara pensinsula in the midsummer glow, trying to see how many breeding waders there are and where they can be found, and ringing the chicks. This time, 4 broods of ringed plover and 2 broods of common sandpiper found. @BirdWatchIE

The second (younger) chick is then fed as well. While they are small, a portion of food (a ball of insects carried in the mouth of the parent, called a bolus) is divided between the chicks. When they are larger, a single bolus is delivered straight into the mouth of one chick.

Day 36: our two little swift eggs have hatched!! 🐣🐣 The three weeks of incubation passed without drama, and finally the 1st egg hatched yesterday, and the 2nd today. Here, JL brings a mouthful of food - feeding the tiny pink bobbleheads is tough but he gets there in the end.

Indeed, ever since the bird left, one of the hitchhikers remains and sits completely still in the same spot, no doubt waiting for the next bird (and its next blood meal) to arrive.

Day 28: A new #swift visited an unoccupied nestbox this morning, and brought some extra visitors. It was crawling with Swift Louseflies (Crataerina pallida)! These are specialist parasites on swifts and spread by hitching a lift on non-breeding birds travelling between colonies.

A short bird ringing session on Cape Clear @CCBOIE this morning allowed for an excellent comparison between the features of wild rock doves (left) and a domesticated (and very lost) homing pigeon (right).

Day 21: Well that third egg is definitely not going to hatch now! A starling stuck its head in early this morning and threw the egg out. Starlings and #swifts are fierce competitors for the same nest spaces, so this one destroys anything it can without getting into a fight.

Although the egg is in front of their faces, they show no interest. A cruel rule in swift family life - any egg or small chick that falls out of the nest cup is ignored and inadvertently kicked around. That means our pair will only be able to raise the 2 eggs now in the nest.

I think this was the moment the egg was laid, at 5.37am today. JL on the nest, and CT shifting around the box looking mighty uncomfortable for a few mins. Then, just before she leaves the box, the egg seems to pop out, debris sticking to its still-wet surface.

Day 20: Well, the third egg was laid... at some point in the past 36 hours. But sadly it ended up on the floor of the box away from the nest. From what I can make out she never actually laid it in the nest, and it's been kicked around since.

@Jamesoneillii Reading your Swift tweets is one of the highlights of my day, James! Must be so cool to be able to monitor them so closely. I'd give anything for a pair of them nesting in our house.