VISITORS to an Oxford museum are monitoring nesting swifts thanks to a live webcam showing their activities.

For the second year running, curators at the Museum of Natural History, in Parks Road, are live-streaming the movements of the swifts that fly in every year from Africa.

The museum’s head of IT, Sarah Phibbs, said the big screen inside the museum, which shows what the swifts are up to in the tower, was popular with visitors.

She said: “The swifts live in Africa and come here to breed.

“They arrive at the end of April and leave at the end of August – at their peak there were about 100 but now there are about 30.

“The first nesting boxes for the swifts were installed in 1947 and in the 1960s they were put in the museum tower.

“The webcam has stirred interest in the swifts and throughout the summer we have about 4,000 people logging on to the website from all over the world to see them.

“People look at the swifts on the webcam and then go outside to see if they can see them flying around the tower.

“It’s nice to think the swifts now have a worldwide following.”

To see the webcam visit oum.ox.ac.uk/swifts.htm