Neil Skinner

Scotland has just done something quietly brilliant for its birds 🐦 New buildings across the country will now have to include "swift bricks", hollow bricks built straight into the walls that give birds a safe place to nest. It sounds like a small thing but it isn't. Swift numbers in the UK have fallen by around 60% since the mid-1990s, and one of the biggest reasons is heartbreakingly simple: modern buildings have nowhere for them to go. Swifts have always nested in the nooks and gaps of our houses, and as those disappeared, so did they. The birds themselves make it worse by being loyal to a fault. Swifts return to the exact same nest site year after year, having flown thousands of miles from Africa to get there. When they arrive to find it sealed up, some will keep flying at the spot again and again, sometimes injuring themselves in the process. The bricks cost about £30 each. They need no maintenance, they don't affect insulation, and once they're in the wall, you'd never know they were there. Sparrows, starlings and house martins use them too, all species in trouble for the same reason. One RSPB conservationist put it starkly. In his part of Glasgow, not a single swift bred in 2025, the first time in his 30 years there. He called it "nothing short of heartbreaking." Scotland is the first country in the UK to write this into law. Campaigners are now hoping the rest follows.