Chiswick and Tuscan Village On Joint Mission To 'Save The Swift'
Local RSPB Swift volunteer Catherine Day on how the link to Campiglia came about
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Catherine at the exhibition at Campiglia with a giant swift wing drawn to scale to illustrate how big a swift’s wing would be at human scale. Just behind it on the stage is the mini-version of the Chiswick Swift Project ‘River of Swifts’ artwork from last year's Tidefest.
Today is World Swift Day - 7th June!.
Celebrate it by looking up to see if you can spot any of these charismatic summer birds. The first of our W4 swifts arrived exactly a month ago today overnight on 6th-7th May.
These amazing migratory birds have brought Chiswick and a small hill town in Tuscany together in a joint collaboration to conserve this threatened species.
To mark World Swift Day, Catherine Day, local RSPB Swift Volunteer who leads the Chiswick Swift Project explains how the connection came about:
“Jon Perry and I have just arrived back from a trip to Italy to visit a swift project in Campiglia Marittima, a small town about 90km south of Pisa. It is a really appropriate coincidence that today happens to be world swift day.
The photo shows a mini-version of the Chiswick Swift Project ‘River of Swifts’ collage on display in Campiglia that we took to show in an exhibition of photographs of swifts, swallows and house martins that is being held at the moment during the town’s ‘Festival dei Rondoni’ (Festival of Swifts). The exhibition displays work by international ‘iskiography’ photographer Lothar Schiffler and entries by local photographers, and there was also a contribution of photos of Chiswick Swifts by Jon.
Lots of readers will remember seeing the ‘River of Swifts’ collage at our stand at Tidefest at Strand on the Green last September and afterwards when it was on show at Chiswick Library. Even though we could only take a mini version, it was much admired in Campiglia. Well done to all the children (and parents!) in Chiswick who came to make a colourful swift for the original artwork!
Eugenia Parisi who runs the Italian project (left) and Catherine(right, in blue) standing at the entrance to Campiglia's swift exhibition (with swallow, swift and house martin cut-outs hanging above ).
Eugenia (pictured above with Catherine) started her Swifts of Campiglia project three years ago, after she picked up some leaflets about swifts at a dusk bird walk that my RSPB local group had been invited to lead in Brompton Cemetery. She had time to read them only when she got home to Italy and, from that, realised that the sizeable swift population in her village was special. She therefore set about starting a conservation and outreach project to protect them.
In just two years, she has done wonders and now a large number of Campiglia’s residents support her project. When residents heard about it and learned about the lifestyle of swifts, she said that person after person said to her, “We took our swifts for granted, but now we realise how special our town is for its swift population and how lucky we are to have them. Of course, now we appreciate them even more!” A ‘swift walk’ is now being signposted through the town with ceramic plaques decorated with swifts being fixed on buildings pointing the way from the lower gateway in the fortified town walls to the castle ruins at the top.
Campiglia sits on a steep hill overlooking the coastal plain, with the islands of Elba and Corsica visible on the horizon. The historic centre is an astonishingly attractive maze of steep streets criss-crossed with vaulted arches and passageways. A great many houses in the historic centre date back to the 14th and 15th centuries.
Jon Perry with two of his photos of swifts in Chiswick in the exhibtion
in Campiglia Marittima.
The display of swifts and house martins zooming among the pantiled rooftops for two or three hours at sunrise and sunset is an experience to wonder at and treasure. It is amazing how this threatened species has brought two such different places together. Jon and I feel it is a privilege to have been invited to be there and to be able to help in the project.”
To get a glimpse the town and Eugenia’s work, type Rondoni Campigliesi or Swifts of Campiglia into your search engine to find her project’s Facebook page.
You can find Catherine and Jon on the Chiswick Swift Project/RSPB stand
at Green Days this Sunday, 9 June as part of the Bedford Park Festival.
Article by Catherine Day.
Photos by Jon Perry.
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June 8, 2019
