Cleaning the box is not recommended, as the common swift uses and expands the existing nest every year to rear the young.
Common swifts place special demands on the nest box, which can be explained by the biology of the animals:
•Due to their physique, swifts are not good at taking off from the ground! They therefore only use parts caught from the air, such as feathers, blades of grass, etc., as material for building their nest. In order to significantly shorten the waiting time, which can sometimes last for years, until the completion of a nest suitable for laying eggs, it is advisable to place a nest in the back of the box, for example Handful of dry grass (about 5 cm long) and some small feathers. The sailors like to use this as a starting aid and use it to build their nest. The birds also breed much more quickly.
•Swifts leave the box with a kind of falling curve and fly towards it in a curve from below. Therefore, the box needs a certain suspension height and there should be no trees or branches directly in front of it that would impede the free approach and departure.
•Starlings compete with swifts for nest holes. Since starlings are sometimes quite competitive and can claim a larger number of closely spaced boxes for themselves and also tend to defecate on facades, our swift burrows have starling barriers. Swifts are very clean animals that do not defecate on facades.
•Swifts are slow to develop new breeding sites. Therefore, the use of lure songs is recommended for accelerated resettlement - but this is not absolutely necessary.
If you require further information on the subject of (re)settlement of swifts and their breeding needs, please contact Mr. Stefan Heuseler at the following email address: stefan.heuseler@gmx.de. He has one of the largest colonies of common swifts in Schleswig-Holstein at his house and has many years of experience.
