Swifting! Fantastic birds and fantastic fun

Swifts are amazing birds on many levels. From a ringers perspective they constitute almost the ultimate challenge. How do you go about catching birds which only ever land into their roof nesting site, and spend the rest of their time catching aerial insects at several hundred/thousand feet high?
Well, during cool and or wet summer days they need to fly low in order to catch their food which are near the surface-especially over lakes.
Even then its not easy because as you can imagine they have excellent eyesight and see normal mist nets very easily. So we adopt a technique called flick netting--see the picture below.

The idea is that you have a net fixed to a vertical pole at one end, then hold the other end on a short pole and let the net rest on the ground. As said Swift flies over he net the operator pulls the net up quickly into the vertical, and bags the bird safely-as seen in the pic.

 

They really are astonishing birds in the hand--really long wings, big eyes, mini bill with wide gape, and short feathered legs. What's not to love about them?? Well, at the end of their short legs are needle sharp claws and muscular toes which sink the claws into your flesh making sure the birds make you pay for the priviledge  of handling them. Oh--and they are covered in lots of quite large parasites we call flat flies-lovely!!
We managed 23 new birds this morning plus a retrap from 2017--goodness knows how many miles that bird has flown in the intervening period!!

the ring on the well travelled retrap

big eye-small bill--big gape