Hannah Bourne-Taylor

Nature writer and bird conservationist Hannah Bourne-Taylor tells how she created a national campaign to save swifts and how she used her painted and naked body to spark a national conversation.

Swifts have declined by more than 60% since 1995 and are on the Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern. They spend most of their time airborne but crucially use cavities in our buildings for their nesting sites. Renovation, demolition and insulation activities are inadvertently destroying the places they nest. Bourne-Taylor describes how she launched her ‘swift brick’ campaign to make bricks that provide a nesting habitat for urban birds compulsory in all new builds.

‘We save what we love. Reading Hannah’s story, compellingly told, you will fall in love with these increasingly endangered birds, true masters of the sky, and realise we must work together to save them.’ Jane Goodall

Bourne-Taylor has spent most of the last decade in Ghana raising and rehabilitating birds and working in pangolin conservation. She trained as a photographer, has worked as a model and is now a ghostwriter. She is founder of The Feather Speech Consultancy CIC, which seeks to engage housebuilders in conservation measures such as swift bricks.