Swift bricks to be installed on all new buildings in Scotland | Hacker News Reader

Swift bricks to be installed on all new buildings in Scotland

theguardian.com

137 pointsbookofjoe94 comments

> Hannah Bourne-Taylor, who has campaigned for swift bricks nationally for four years.

The article apparently undersells her role. Clicking through to her site, she seems to have been almost singularly responsible for making this happen:

> For my campaign – for swifts – I have walked through London naked, twice. First to launch the petition (how else would a nobody reach the almost impossible target?) and secondly to the meeting at the Home Office, with Zac Goldsmith by my side in an unprecedented show of alliance, to remind the government that swifts’ existence is at stake.

https://hannahbournetaylor.com/the-feather-speech-campaign-f...

(Probably NSFW photo on that page.)

Her photo on the linked article definitely makes her seem quite determined to get this done. "Your house is getting a swift brick, your choice is whether you install it during construction, or I install it through your window."

No kidding. From an earlier article:

> During her campaign, she’s been trolled by everyone from ministers to abusive internet trolls. “The worst ones are not the horrible violent ones, it’s the relentless, patronising criticism from nature lovers – ‘This is just one species, this is not going to solve the nature crisis.’ Firstly, [the brick] is not just for one species. And secondly, you’d like little old me to stop pesticide use? Let me just get on that right now. We shouldn’t just get Chris Packham to do everything. The nature crisis is on us.”

> In private, says Bourne-Taylor, politicians “always say things like: ‘Oh, legislation is very hard.’ That’s your job. Do your job. A senior Labour minister told me that [housing minister] Matthew Pennycook was getting irritated by the mention of swift bricks, implying that I should pipe down. How about you just do it and then I’ll go away?”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/05/the-hypo...

> "Your house is getting a swift brick, your choice is whether you install it during construction, or I install it through your window."

While I'm fine with adding nesting opportunities for birds to newly built houses I'm quite done with the die Partei hat immer recht attitude of these do-gooders. The attitude of 'I know better and anyone who refuses my wisdom is a cave troll who can expect a brick chucked through the window' is not an example of 'girl power' or 'righteous anger' but one of an individual not used to having to explain her position based on facts and figures. The aggressive pose in that photo only underlines this. A fine photo, sure, but combined with the above message it is not so fine.

It sounds like she has: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/05/the-hypo...

I think you're probably paying too much attention to my characterization, and not to the actual facts of the matter.

Someone called Taylor campaigning for Swifts. Pretty cool coincidence.

The photo is somewhat NSFW (lots of exposed skin, no “naughty bits”), but it’s well worth looking at in some detail. It’s an amazing photo!

There's nothing NSFW about that photo, she's wearing some shirt-thing which happens to be light-coloured.

She's definitely not wearing a shirt (the birds appear to be glued on felt patches) and she described it as walking naked:

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/870fe1a74661591c34ea4a6f61ce1...

from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/05/the-hypo...

Some people would find it NSFW. I erred on the side of caution.

We have a lot of swallows (mostly barn and green) on our rural property. Wife is currently battling a pair that wants to build a nest above the back door. Anyway... In the evenings and mornings there might be one dozen or more contstantly flying around between our trees eating insects. Somewhat mesmerizing to watch. Gemini says a single swallow eats about 850 insects per day. Pretty sure that includes a high percentage of mozzies and flies. 850 x 12 = 10,200. Let's assume 50% mozzies (we have lots). So 5,100 fewer per day. Go swallows Go.

Reminds me of a story I read about an overpass in Texas that housed tons of bats. It creeped some folks out, so they disallowed them to roost. Once the bats were gone, the neighborhood was overrun with insects. Did not take long to have the humans get the bats back. Go bats go.

That reminds me of a guy one one of the mailing lists I'm on. His neighbour dug a pond on his ground somewhere in a particularly mozzie-infested part of rural Texas. Plenty shade, trees around, nice big pond.

"But that's crazy", everyone said, "that'll be a breeding ground for more mosquitoes, that's where they'll all go!"

And you know what, they were right. It was hoaching with mozzies, who laid their eggs in the water, which then hatched into mosquito larvae.

Which were then promptly eaten by all the carp he'd stocked it with.

Year on year the circle of "not many mosquitoes any more" around his farm has expanded by about quarter of a mile.

As I found the article did a poor job of demonstrating what a swift brick is, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_brick

I opened the article without a clue about what they were. Within my first 5-10 s on it I knew what they were.

Literally right below the title:

> bricks that provide nesting for swifts and other endangered birds

And a picture.

It has two very clear pictures at the top...?

There's a picture of a box with a bunch of playing cards on top of it, then a picture of a building that has one. I found it insufficient and thought others might too.

There's a picture of the brick, you mean.

That was not clear to me. Dunno why people are making such a big deal out of "if you want more info, go here."

I agree with you, I immediately understood what they are, but what's the problem with more clarification? I've upvoted you.

Offering clarification is good, shitting on the article is bad.

The article does, in fact, do a perfectly fine job of explaining what a swift brick is. GP could easily have said “I couldn’t quite picture what a swift brick is”, but instead said “article did a poor job explaining swift bricks”, and that’s what they’re getting criticised for.

Cool project! My folks get Cliff Swallows nesting under the eaves above their door in central Texas and they make a huge mess. I wish we could encourage them to nest on the side of the house with some bespoke bricks, but they enjoy the doorway.

We had chimney swifts growing up. They were bastards who built nests that would just absolutely clog the chimney. But it was neat to watch them circle and drop into the chimney by the dozens right before dark.

One of my best memories is my grandfather cussing loudly down the chimney in the fall as he cleaned out their nests. It just echoed through the house from the stove.

In the US bird populations are down 30% since the 70s (with many species seeing much more significant declines) and you see similar trends in many other countries. You'll probably see a lot more of these sorts of conservation efforts as people start to realize how dire things are ecologically.

Source for decline number: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aaw1313

I also know the numbers are similarly dire across the animal kingdom. At least birds aren't doing as poorly as amphibians where 40% of species are threatened (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10567568/)

Even during the 70s there were already conservation efforts. The Eastern bluebird almost went extinct in the 70s but a bunch of Americans built birdhouses for them.

Yeah, in some way losing 3 billion birds in the US is painting a rosy picture. Raptors are one of the groups that has had an overall increase but that's partially because DDT was only banned in 1972. Passenger pigeons were also possibly the most numerous bird in the world (with population estimates around 4 billion) and were long extinct by 1970.

It sounds very doom and gloom but I should say that there's also tons and tons of people working very hard to make things better (like the woman in this article). I've met a lot of people working very hard at conservation, generally for little personal benefit since the pay is abysmal, and it's always very heartening.

Building construction in the UK is not the fastest most-frequent thing to start with. And planning constraints can be quite strict[0].

> Julia Moulder, development director at Catalyst and chair of the G15 development committee, said: ‘If you can’t source the brick and you change it you need to go back through the planning process, and that is something that’s started happening. I think it is going to start to knock on through into delays.’

> Ian Tallentire, development director at Home Group, said he has had three or four recent instances where a brick has been changed, necessitating new planning conditions.

> ‘I have had project managers on the phone saying we need to keep going, and then you just have to make the call. If the bricks are very similar I am sometimes happy to take the risk and then go back and sort the planning permission out,’ he said.

As with most well-meaning legislation on building in Anglophone countries, these schemes are all highly-popular, cause death by a thousand cuts, and then people who like them afterwards go on to complain about how 'corporations' or 'immigrants' or 'Airbnb' or some other bogeyman is responsible for "The Housing Crisis" and so on. Before you know it, you will be lobbying your government to declare a Housing Emergency[1] and asking for them to add more requirements to building housing to ensure that sufficient housing is built; and they will gladly acquiesce to the will of the people which, while strong, can nonetheless not fight physics or economics.

0: https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/brick-shortage-delay-th...

1: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/committee...

I don't think that 35 pounds is likely to be a significant driver of rising home prices.

It will if it's a required 35lb item, which is not readily available from multiple sources.

35 quid, not 35 lbs.

Yes, that's what I meant, but I'm an idiot and just used the word that came to mind: GBP symbol -> "pound" -> "lb". And I don't have a quid (GBP) button on my keyboard.

Thanks for the correction.

It may amuse you to know they're both essentially the same thing. GBP is formally Pound Sterling, formerly 1 pound (tower pound / 20 troy ounces) of Sterling Silver. Which is why £ is a stylised L.

But having to wait months for planning permission because you had to substitute the specialized brick will be. The thing with thousand cuts is that no single cut is significant. There are a thousand of them. And they're all small.

seems like property developers complaining about having to stick to their own plans

I am frustrated by this article.

1. Why focus on Swifts as opposed to any other species in decline? They state that they are "iconic", so maybe that's the answer? Are they more "iconic" than any other specifies in Scotland?

2. Why are these bricks the best solution? Why not take that money that would be spent on bricks and instead preserve land, or just build them dedicated houses elsewhere?

3. Why does this need to be done via government mandate versus voluntarily asking people to build Swift housing in existing buildings or land?

I'm worried that this is a government policy with great intentions that will result in economic costs with unmeasured benefits and bureaucratic bloat. Hopefully I am proven wrong!

> 1. Why focus on Swifts as opposed to any other species in decline? They state that they are "iconic", so maybe that's the answer? Are they more "iconic" than any other specifies in Scotland?

They are a red-listed species whose population in the UK has declined by two thirds in 30 years. They are also a species for which there's an obvious measure that can be taken to reverse one of the changes which we know has happened over that time (improved building standards reducing the availability of nesting spaces).

If we can't take simple steps to protect swifts I don't think there's much chance that we'll protect anything. Conservation wise, this is really low hanging fruit.

> 2. Why are these bricks the best solution? Why not take that money that would be spent on bricks and instead preserve land, or just build them dedicated houses elsewhere?

Swifts are extremely site-loyal. You can't just hope that they will move elsewhere. Before buildings they nested in caves and tree cavities. Caves in particular don't move from year to year, so as a result the birds have a strong preference to return to the exact same location where they themselves were born and are slow to colonize other places.

Also your suggestions sound extremely expensive compared to this plan. Swift bricks cost like 30GBP retail. Yes, that's a lot more than the normal house brick they replace, but it's trivial compared to the other costs of building a house.

> 3. Why does this need to be done via government mandate versus voluntarily asking people to build Swift housing in existing buildings or land?

That's more or less the current situation in England, and perhaps unsurprisingly it's extremely rare for developers to actually install swift bricks. Indeed it's relatively uncommon for developers to actually follow through on their existing legally mandated ecological commitments [1].

Making something mandatory everywhere is also cheaper than making it only required in certain places: it eliminates all the bureaucracy around deciding whether this or that development is in the right area, and makes it extremely easy to follow and enforce the rules.

Now it is possible that the lack of nest sites isn't the dominant factor in the decline of swifts. For example it could also be related to the decline in flying insects, or changing weather patterns induced by climate change. We aren't really sure [2], however from that study: "it would be precautionary for conservation efforts to continue to focus on ensuring that safe and productive nesting sites are in sufficient supply", and we also know that the swift bricks will be used by many other bird species as well as swifts.

[1] https://wildjustice.org.uk/lost-nature-report/ [2] https://www.bto.org/our-work/science/publications/papers/dem...

I think what really stands out about this, is that having it installed as a pre-made brick is very cost-effective.

But this cost-effective route isn't readily available to most people, as most people don't build homes. Developers build lots, and then sell finished homes. So you need to entice developers. And historically, "the stick" is the only enticement developers remotely pay attention to.

"If you want a swift brick, install one yourself" is much easier said than done - you're talking about removing an existing brick, replacing it, hoping you don't damage the course or the cavity, probably voiding any warranty on a new home, etc. It's certainly not a £35 retrofit.

That was a really thoughtfully put together answer. Kudos, i enjoyed reading that

I wouldn't say they are particularly iconic in Scotland. But the answer to the 1) is that they have found a possible simple solution to the issue.

I agree with all your points. And --being vegan-- i really resonate with the "why is this species protected/helped/"iconic" and the other basically deserves torture, confinement and pre-mature death.

Still the piece gave me a warm feeling. I also happen to think swifts are a lovely sight on the country side. Does that make them more iconic?

Prolly not.

The article focuses on swifts because it's about swift bricks, a cheap and practical answer to helping the declining swift population.

But don't worry, there are plenty of other initiatives elsewhere across Scotland and the UK helping other species of birds, seeing as you're clearly interested in this subject.

I think for #2 and #3, you need to appreciate that it's not actually about swifts, it's about getting some free press attention for a politician.

A few token swift bricks at sometime in the future, at someone else's expense, is so much easier than preserving land, or building habitat. As an added bonus, the extra regulation makes building new houses more complicated/tedious, and older, swift-free houses more valuable and illegal to build more of, so that's a win for everyone.

this made me weep a little.

I suppose because the prevailing attitude in the west nowadays is who gives a damn about preserving species.

Amongst the money and power seeking it definitely is but I'm not sure how prevailing that really is among the general population. I think for starters many don't even realize there's a biodiversity crisis (doesn't exactly appear on mainstream media that often, plus there's the shifting baseline). And those that do realize there are some issues might give a damn but don't know what to do about it.

Anyway: if there's anything I'd weep about it's that measures like these are needed in the first place. Far too little, far too late. But to be honest I stopped weeping and just do whatever I can personally such that the day I die I can at least have some peace with my life.

I have an old 80 foot chimney from a coal furnace. I maintain it simple for the annual chimney swifts. They come in mid April and leave in August. Apparently only 2 raise a family in it but it ends up with 100s at its peak occupancy. It’s getting re-pointed this year and I will have 2 hi-def cameras installed at the top to capture the activity. Might end up being my first AI project.

Chimney swift vs common swift. The two species adapted to habitat loss and urbanization differently.

Another big difference appears to be they live in different parts of the world. Chimney Swifts migrate between North and South America and the common Swift migrates between Europe/Asia and Africa.

https://www.earthofbirds.com/common-swift-vs-chimney-swift/

Do they not have mice and rats there? This looks like a place those creatures would nest long before a bird got to it.

I live close to the most populous city in Scotland (Glasgow), and even only 6mile (10km) out of the city there is extensive greenery. Rats and mice are very uncommon here. They are rarely seen in the city, and I live close to very large fields and open countryside.

1. These bricks are normally installed close to the roof, under the guttering. 2. If anything, the main rodent of concern would be squirrels...but they will nest in the gutters anyway so having a sealed metal box with a very small opening is likely better anyway.

> They are rarely seen in the city

Rats and mice are ridiculously common in central Glasgow, its plagued the city for years to the point many argue its a public health crisis. While sure the suburbs might be better, I've never once seen someone describe Glasgow and rats being uncommon in the same sentence. I literally can't visit Glasgow without seeing an enormous rat in the street 5 minutes after arriving.

There are loads of nice things I will say about Glasgow - I lived there for decades. Being low on the rat count is not one of them. The local politicians constantly talk about the rat plague too.

> https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/rats-plague-...

> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-66732675

> https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgow-rat-...

> https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/probe-finds...

I live in rural Fife - effectively in the middle of a farm. We get mice in the house in October or so when it starts getting colder - never seen a rat here. Oddly I've never seen a fox here although I used to see them all the time when we lived in central Edinburgh.

There are a lot of mice in the Scottish countryside. We used to live way out of any major city and still got them.

Not at the top of a wall, no.

I’ve seen them scale brick walls at my house.

They can climb it, but would they choose to nest in a hole 6-7+ m off the ground if they have alternatives?

Meanwhile the swifts will definitely not choose the ground.

Can mice scale vertical walls?

Yes, they can easily climb rough brick walls. A youtube search will provide many examples.

Vertical walls made of brick? Yes. I’ve seen it at my own house.

It's weird to see starlings listed as endangered. We seem to have no shortage of the darn things in the US.

"Starlings declined by 57% between 1995 and 2023 and they now feature on the Red List of birds of high conservation concern."

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/starling

"Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris has most recently been assessed for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2018. Sturnus vulgaris is listed as Least Concern."

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22710886/137493608

All thanks to a Shakespeare fan, Eugene Schieffelin.

https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article...

I fail to see how ordinary brick can accommodate bird nest inside, it's way too small and the brick in the article is way too big, seem almost like double depth, so how can this be used actually without disrupting design?

The bricks extend into the cavity region behind the brickwork. Here, pretty much all homes have a gap between the brickwork and the structure to prevent moisture transfer (although in recent-ish history firms have done cavity insulation, which often has negative consequences as done poorly can result in quite extensive damp and mold).

I would think the cavity will be filled with insulation and if you remove it and install there this empty brick you will be leaking heat through this place which will be significantly coolder/noisier.

Swift bricks are a fully enclosed unit (other than the hole on the outside)

The article image showed it install high on the wall, in what would be the attic. And there are alternate designs that are normal depth, but multiple bricks tall and wide.

Potentially but in the photo it is installed in a gable which aren't usually insulated.

The Guardian reporting on Scottish politics for a change.

Are these Swift 6.3 bricks, or legacy ones?

Legacy - they’re blocking

In the ideal world that would be a good idea, but in the real world with severe housing shortages, not enough house building it is not in my opinion

The brick is £35 each according to the article. That's practically nothing compared to the total cost of a modern house.

The problem is not the brick price, but extra regulations, controls that they are followed etc, plus the fact that now instead of say 10000 identical bricks for one house you need 9999 ones + one different. I simply think the priority should be more house building as people struggle to find places to live, and this measure will not help (the effect will probably be small I don't know)

It's a house, not a wall. And it's not being built by a robot. Adding the brick is inconsequential.

Go to any building site and ask a bricklayer if adding a single custom brick to the construction will stop them building the house and he'll laugh in your face.

You're missing GP's point. The objection is not to the inclusion of swift bricks in new houses but the belief that it is sufficient to stabilize/restore the population, because relatively few new houses are being constructed.

Every marathon begins with one step.

How will requiring a £35 brick in a new building cause further problems with the severe housing shortage?

it costs nothing and hinders nothing, yet provides a benefit, so I don't see how it couldn't be a good idea. it has no impact on housing in any way

If there were tax incentives for this instead of it being mandatory I'd support it wholeheartedly, but the idea of people being forced to directly attract and accommodate animals to/on their property under threat of punishment is unnerving to me. It's a completely different thing to being made to leave an existing den or nest alone.

I think it would be fun for wildlife to have their own barrister to bring lawsuits against people like you for destroying what was otherwise their native grounds before us meat viruses spread wanton destruction everywhere. The fact is you can't leave 'existing' alone, there is none. In countries like the UK the place has been completely and totally terraformed by people.

> us meat viruses

I wonder what brings about this sort of reverse-chauvinist viewpoint? Humans are "nature" too, and we have just as much of a right to planet we live on.

> The fact is you can't leave 'existing' alone, there is none.

What does this even mean?

It's a form of self-loathing, often among middle class people. It is possible to be pro-nature and pro-humans. But there is a misanthropic element in some of these types.

Yea, no. "hur de dur, you have to hate yourself and all other humans if you even attempt to recognize the absolute destruction we are causing around us"

>t is possible to be pro-nature and pro-humans.

No, really it's too late for that in most senses. We the humans fucked up and the vast majority of species are suffering because of it. Now, we the human species are really starting to get our comeuppance from climate change. With the average American around me saying "roll more coal" there is no nice happy ending here where we don't wipe out 99.5% of the species in the next 100 years.

Hey, a few billion years ago anerobic oxygen producing bacteria poisoned the planet, almost extincting themselves, yet they opened a new path for other multicellular animals to take over the planet.

Maybe after we kill ourselves off because we're too dumb not to suffocate ourselves some nice slime moulds will take over.

When I read phrases like "meat viruses" (see above) then I see self-loathing, because these people are referring to themselves, not just other people. Many people go through a phase of this in their teens, when they are trying to become individuals, but later mature to other viewpoints. There are some extreme environmentalists who advocate for human extinction to save nature. Maybe at some point in the future, there will be a plan to maintain off-Earth colonies while letting the world "rest". (An idea already explored in the spoof documentary "Alternative 3".)

By the way, humans are a product of the world's ecosystem, therefore it is in their own interest to strike a balance.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that the ruling class are small in number, and any moves to decrease the numbers of the rest of the human race benefits them in terms of ratios. Especially after automation when most of us are surplus to their requirements. They can easily dress this up as an environmental concern, just as today there are non-progressive taxes on the poor for fuel or food, which are greenwashed.

p.s. "Dumb" is ableist language.

Would prey be able to sue predators for assault as well? Or is this just a uniquely anti-human sentiment?

You’re getting downvoted, but I agree. It’s never the carrot but always the stick with these kind of government initiatives and then people wonder why they’re so hated.

If they were smart they would make it a tax break, and the more you do to welcome animals on your property the bigger it is. Why just one swift brick? What about a bird house? How about a little shelter for cats? Animal lovers get rewarded and those who would rather not don’t get punished.

People won't ever learn. If anything, all this "Swift brick" malarky makes me mentally associate swifts and swift bricks in general, regardless of the situation, with eco-authoritarianism (even though it isn't the swifts' faults that obnoxious upper class luvvies want to force people to attract them), which I imagine is counter to the attitude they want.

You say they're hated, but my echo chamber says they're a great idea.

If you're so opposed though, you could always vote them out in the next Scottish election.

Legislation like this is never really "hated", in fact people will look at you funny if you oppose it (or you get downvoted). But people hate how expensive housing is, they hate when they personally have to deal with the regulatory state, and they hate the outcomes of these types of regulations.

It's kind of like how a developer might be totally fine with an inefficient line of code and accuse you of prematurely optimising. But then the entire program is slow, because this mentality leaks to every line of code in the codebase. So they hate "slow software" but they see no problem with the individual inefficiencies.

So instead imposing a tiny cost on the people building the home, your solution is to make everyone in the nation pay for it.

Sounds like HN: Make the public pay, while the private keeps the profit.

That is how taxation works, people pay for services and things that other people receive.

Yes, just like people receiving healthcare should pay for their procedures, instead of making everyone in the nation pay for it. Abolish the NHS amirite!!!

Hmm, probably not a very good argument for you to make unless you are a libertarian, in which case you wouldn’t be complaining about tax breaks anyhow.

BS, there are endless tax incentives for different things and many of them are abused. Also making it incentive-based is often a way for people to say 'not my problem, someone else will take care of it' and have nothing change.

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