A STRIKING new addition has appeared at Wokingham beauty spot Dinton Pastures.
A tall swift tower now stands high above Black Swan Island, in the hope of attracting swifts to make a home there.
The country park in Hurst is already a favourite feeding ground for migratory swifts, which swoop over the lake for insects.
The birds prefer nesting in tall structures, so the eight-metre-high tower’s open location is ideal for helping them hunt, and hopefully, to settle.
Swifts are on the red list for conservation, with numbers down 62% since 1995.
Providing safe nesting spaces is crucial to their survival.
The tower includes a built-in caller that plays at dawn and dusk to attract returning swifts.
It is hoped that over time, this will help to encourage colony-building activity.
Wokingham Borough Council has partnered with artist, Will Nash, known for creating beautiful, functional sculptures, to install it.
Funded by developer contributions, this is just one of many projects the council says it delivers each year, to support biodiversity across the borough.
Swifts are superb flyers that can cover two million miles in their lifetime.
Sleeping, eating, bathing and even mating in the air, they rarely touch the ground. The fastest birds in level flight, they can reach a top speed of 69mph.
Against the sky, they appear black, with a bullet shaped head, and boomerang shaped curved wings.
They are summer visitors to the UK, but are most numerous in the south and east, returning to spend winters in Africa.
