Winchester Cathedral – full house 2026
Roger and I went to check the Swift boxes in the tower of the Cathedral in mid-September. You can read our previous blogs on the subject here and here.
In short, the boxes were installed in August 2020, and this year, for the first time, all 20 boxes have been used.
Winchester Cathedral - Swift box end of season inspections
2021 | 1 pair bred + 1 nest complete |
2022 | 2 pairs bred + 5 nests complete |
2023 | 9 pairs bred + 4 nests complete |
2024 | 11 pairs bred + 5 nests complete |
2025 | 17 pairs bred + 2 nests complete |
2026 | 20 pairs bred |
One couldn’t ask for a better result than that, though in box 8 we noted that an egg had rolled out of the nest, and in box 11 we found that a youngster had perished at about two weeks old. These things do happen and are not unusual. In five of the boxes we found pupae of the Lousefly Crataerina pallida, and we continue to crush these in order to reduce the parasite load. These are specialized, flightless blood-sucking insects that live exclusively as an external parasite on Common Swifts.
Several of the boxes contained lots of Common Clothes Moths, Tineola bisselliella, whose larvae quickly strip and consume the feathery parts of the feathers lining the nests, leaving just the feather shafts.
