There are truly fatal mistakes you can make when dealing with a found swift, and some of them have been circulating with deplorable persistence since their prehistoric origins. It is high time to finally clear them up, otherwise you will certainly do more harm than good to the swift you have found!
=> Never throw a swift into the air!
This is the worst mistake of all. The rumor still circulates everywhere that a swift cannot take off from the ground by itself, so you have to throw it into the air. This is wrong. Swifts can take off from the ground! (see also: Youtube).
Any healthy, flight-capable swift with intact, fully developed plumage would immediately take off again by itself if placed on the ground. However, you will never voluntarily encounter a healthy, flight-capable swift with intact, fully developed plumage on the ground, because swifts are permanent fliers who spend their entire lives in the air and only have brief contact with solid ground when breeding in their nesting cavity. When a swift goes down on the ground, it has compelling reasons. It may be injured, exhausted, or simply too young to fly. How many injured swifts may have already been thrown into the air and helplessly crashed again, with broken bones and torn tendons, suffering unspeakable pain! How many swift nestlings, whose feathers were still in blood quills and far from fully grown, have people tried to "teach to fly" in this barbaric way!
A healthy swift flies, period. It does not need us for that!
=> Never feed anything other than insects!
When you find a bird in need of help, the impulse is strong to immediately stuff something into its beak. "Something" is often taken very literally, and so the most incredible things have ended up in the stomachs of unfortunate swifts. The spectrum ranges from the terrible fate of a young swift that children fed stones "for fun" and killed, to generous offerings from ones own table (salami, schnitzel, chicken liver, mozzarella, strawberries, almonds, parsley...) to common feeding tips that unfortunately are still recommended today by certain "bird experts" and even in supposed reference books: ground meat, mealworms, maggots, earthworms, canary rearing food, baby food, oatmeal, cat and dog food, as well as various dubious food mixtures. All these foods have one thing in common: they lead to serious damage and ultimately to the death of the swift treated with them. Yet it is actually so simple, and a look in a bird identification book is enough:
The swift is a pure insect eater!
=> A swift is not a lap pet!
Swifts do not know humans as enemies. They react fearlessly when in contact with humans, lacking the innate shyness we know from other wild birds. This can lead to treating a swift like a pet or family member. In the worst case, the humanization of the patient goes so far that finders do not want to give "their" swift back and refuse to release it because it is so tame. There is hardly anything worse you can do to this sociable permanent flier. Never forget that when you care for a swift, you have the freest animal under Gods sky in your care for a while and may help it return to its natural habitat.
"Your" swift does not belong to you, but only to itself.
Apart from that, the swift, like all our native wild animals, is protected by law. As a specially protected species, it is subject to the provisions of the Federal Nature Conservation Act and may only be kept in human hands as long as it takes to restore its ability to survive in the wild after an injury or, if found as a nestling, to raise it appropriately and release it into the wild.
=> Found swift lively-active = Caution, something is wrong here!
Finders often tell us that "their" swift is lively and rampaging around in its box. This behavior is usually intuitively valued as positive, while a swift sitting quietly in the corner of its artificial nest is viewed with concern. But the exact opposite is often the case! A well-fed, uninjured swift sits calmly in its nest, while swifts on the verge of starvation, emaciated, use their last strength to try to attract attention. If your swift shows such behavior, immediately check its nutritional status (e.g., by weighing and comparing with the table in the Feeding section)