Deaf woman who nurses injured swifts back to life opens “UK’s first” migratory bird orphanage and…
Carly Ahlen said at peak times she may care for 20 to 30 parentless swifts at a time.
This comes as almost half of the nation’s swifts have disappeared over the last 25 years, putting them on the red list of endangered birds.
Other red list migratory birds, such as Housemartens, will be welcomed at her new Swift Station rehabilitation clinic, Kent.
The founder of animal rescue charity Gabo Wildlife takes in babies who have tried to fly too early, fallen from a nest due to extreme heat, or have been starved because their parent has disappeared. If the mother bird stops returning it is likely to have died.
The Gabo Wildlife website states: “Our Swift station evolved from the founder of Gabo Wildlife, Carly Ahlen, and her idea for the UK’s first wildlife clinic dedicated exclusively to the rescue and rehabilitation of migratory birds, such as swifts, house martins and swallows, due to lack of specialists who follow good practices and optimal protocol.
“Common swifts feed upon insects solely. Feeding any alternative will have serious consequences and, worse yet, death.”
Miss Ahlen is profoundly deaf and has spent years caring for hundreds of swifts, with people travelling from North London and Essex to bring her vulnerable chicks.
The trained marine mammal medic helps them regain strength and weight before she lets them fly away.
They are insectivores and she feeds them crickets, bee drone larvae and supplements.
Swifts tend to fly 42 days after they hatch, and through years of experience the rescuer has learned the ideal weight for them to succeed.
She has observed the birds do push ups to build muscle before taking off on migration that could cover 800 kilometres a day.
The birds spend their lives almost entirely in the air and feed, sleep and mate in flight, landing only to nest.
The bird carer said: “They fly incredible distances and are exhausted but so faithful to a nest site, returning year after year to the same site, but when they try to enter the nesting site they find it demolished or building works commenced and they’ve no energy left searching for another nesting site, it’s a terrible time for swift in UK.
“Because swifts feed on the wing they can’t pick up food, so I have to hand fed everyone of them, hourly.
“I use a good pound (500-600 grams) of insects to pull one common swift through for 4 weeks, it’s very expensive and time consuming but swifts captured my heart and curiosities since I was a little girl, I would call them, flying angels and no one knew anything about them but now I have event many, many secrets about their behaviours and they continue to fill me with admiration.
“I put them together in groups of similar ages, they are very good tempered, they communicate and ores on others. I haven’t encountered an aggressive swift yet.”