Common swifts ( Apus apus) screaming as they fly in formation over cottage roofs at dusk, Lacock, Wiltshire. The return of swifts to the UK in early May, with loud screaming parties whipping over rooftops, signals the start of summer. It’s a sight and sound once common in communities across the UK, but many villages and towns have lost their swifts. They’ve hung on, however, in places where there are many old houses, with spaces under eaves and roof tiles.

While many old houses have been demolished or renovated and openings stopped up, swifts readily adopt swift boxes attached under eaves, or in attics, or hollow “swift bricks” built into walls, returning to feed chicks with insects crammed into throat pouches, before heading out to collect more. When the fledglings leave six weeks or so after hatching, they won’t land again for three years until they themselves start to nest. Swifts eat, sleep, mate and collect nest material on the wing.

Simon Evans ringing a common swift chick removed briefly from a nest box in All Saints Church belfry in Worlington, Suffolk. Swift groups have installed multiple nest boxes in several old churches across the UK with great success. A 2017 project to install a swift call playback system in a medieval bell tower in Bradford on Avon attracted swifts within days to inspect a multiple nest box. The hope is they will nest there this year.

A swift flies to a nest box attached to the eaves of a cottage with a nesting materials in its beak.

A swift chick calls loudly for food from a parent that has just returned from a foraging trip with a throat-pouch full of insects.

Five nestboxes for swifts made from plastic piping, attached to the wall of a block of flats, Edgecombe, Cambridge.

A week-old orphaned swift chick is fed with insect food by Judith Wakelam in her home, Worlington, Suffolk, UK, July. Worlington village in Suffolk nearly lost all its swifts a few years ago when a cottage with many nests was demolished, but a local swift group installed around 40 nestboxes in the church bell tower and one of the UK’s largest colonies now lives there. A recent survey recorded more than 30 pairs producing 70 fledglings in 2017.

Wakelam returns an orphan swift chick to a child’s play pen used to house several chicks. She raises orphaned swift chicks brought to her from across East Anglia, feeding the voracious youngsters every few hours with crickets and waxworms. When they’re a good weight with wings long enough for flight, she releases them on the village cricket ground.

Wakelam releasing an orphaned swift chick she has fostered and fed in her home until it was ready to fly.

A massive swift tower comprising 100 nest boxes arrayed and coloured like a setting sun now stands in an urban park as a public art piece in Cambridge. • Nick Upton is a wildlife and conservation photographer, and winner of the documentary series category of the British Wildlife Photography awards 2014 and 2016