Swift bricks to be installed on all new buildings in Scotland

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...

[delayed]

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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/)

this made me weep a little.

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

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

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

The Guardian reporting on Scottish politics for a change.

Are these Swift 6.3 bricks, or legacy ones?

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

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?

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.