Stimpson has one achievement in particular to mark: he has just completed his goal of building 30,000 swift boxes, which could house half of the UK’s breeding population of 60,000 pairs. According to the British Trust for Ornithology, a high percentage of swift boxes put up in the UK have been made by Stimpson. Thirteen years ago no one was making swift boxes, so Stimpson started. Stimpson holds one of his handmade swift boxes. “Swifts are the one thing where an individual can make a significant difference,” says Dick Newell, from Action for Swifts, who has 66 pairs of nesting swifts in his village of Landbeach in Cambridgeshire, 20 of them nesting on his house.

Source: The Guardian January 21, 2022 15:00 UTC