Statement by Dr. Ruth Cromie on World Migratory Bird Day 2025

‘Martinet noir’, the french for ‘swift’, I recently learned from the gentleman from France who stood next to me admiring the educational panel beneath a new ‘swift tower’, built on the edge of a Welsh coastal city. The tower provided an array of rather beautifully designed nestboxes and a recorded call to lure in these wondrous migratory birds arriving back from over the seas.

I hope in the coming months, Cardiff’s city dwellers will be able to hear the calls for real, have their hearts lifted by flocks of screeching scimitar-winged swifts circling high in the skies. Someone once described swifts as ‘the ultimate flying bird - totally committed to the sky in a way that is without concession to the revolving planet below them.’

This year, more than most, I’ve found the hopefulness of spring migration to be even more valuable. Surely all of us understand the importance of giving every one of us access to nature – our shared natural heritage binds us as humans.

Most of us now live in urban settings and so now, more than ever, we need to make space for nature in our urban environments. We need networks of green and blue spaces, a focus on wildlife friendly planning. This is not just for them but for the services they provide to us, among those, how they ground us and bring us daily moments of unplanned joy – those glimpses of being wild and free.

I hope the swifts use that tower this year, and I hope that nice French gentleman sees them from whichever town he lives in on their autumn migration back to the skies of Africa. And it would be a greater win still, if those swifts started to notice the revolving planet below them – and appreciate our commitment to building bird friendly communities.

Happy World Migratory Bird Day! 

 

Notes

The swift tower https://glamorganbirds.org.uk/swift-project/