Why?
The goal of caring for an injured or orphaned swift at the Swift Clinic is always to restore its ability to survive in the wild and release it at the earliest possible time.
After proper veterinary care, it is usually necessary during convalescence to do movement exercises with the patient to prevent muscle atrophy and rebuild flight muscles. Physiotherapy is also essential for patients who must be kept in captivity for a long time, e.g., due to feather damage. In swifts that have suffered bruises or whose wing had to be temporarily immobilized after a wing fracture, joint stiffness can occur which, without extensive movement therapy, leads to permanent inability to fly. For the psyche of the bird, which is often severely shocked and disturbed after accidents and injuries, it can also be vital to strengthen and restore its self-confidence through physiotherapy and flight exercises.
Imped swifts that have undergone extensive surgical renewal of their flight feathers also need several days of training in order to get used to their "new" plumage; of course, this also serves to check whether the imping was successful and whether the feather structure remains closed and physiologically arranged under stress.
How often?
Optimal is at least half an hour of movement training per bird per day. At the Swift Clinic, there is a special training room: The floor is covered with soft blankets and covered with clean white sheets, walls and windows are hung all around with floor-length coarse-mesh cotton curtains, in which the bird can cling well when landing. Radiators, windowsill, and door frames are padded with foam. The entire room is designed so that a bird flying in it cannot injure itself anywhere. Anyone who must train a swift in their own premises should remember that this bird reaches high speeds even over short distances, and thoroughly secure all furnishings, windows, mirrors, etc. Since swifts often fall to the floor during training, it must be softly padded.
How?
At the beginning of physiotherapy, the swift must get used to the type of exercises. Its best to first place it on the padded floor and let it flutter or crawl around. Very quickly it will use its wings and "toboggan" through the room.
Now you should hang it in the curtain so that it learns that it can hold on and climb up here. Some do this so weasel-fast that you cannot run to a chair quickly enough to pick the swift off the curtain rod at the top. Please be extremely careful when removing from the curtain, the feet are very sensitive, and swifts usually cling very tightly!
Never leave the bird unattended in the training room! There are always sources of danger somewhere that nobody thought of. Also, a swift on the floor can very quickly get underfoot.
Climbing exercises
Climbing in the curtain, which is done with the help of both wings, strengthens the birds chest muscles - and better than any expensive fitness studio, the gluteal and thigh muscles of the physiotherapist who constantly has to climb on the chair, stretch up, and retrieve the candidate again. Because just like a cat in the treetop, a swift does not think of coming down on its own. Understandable from its point of view, but only tolerable for the trainer if they have the stature of a basketball player.
Flight training
Some swifts also push off from the curtain by themselves. This can be critical if the candidate is still very lame; then it will crash down and can hurt itself. You have to slowly test what you can expect from the bird at the beginning, and let it fly into the curtain first from a short, then from an increasingly longer distance. This is done with a light swing from the flat hand. The trainer must find the right relationship between their own effort and the birds flying ability. The swift must neither plop to the floor nor smack against the ceiling, but should land cleanly in the curtain. So please with a lot of feeling! The swift training room is not a bowling alley.
Hand training
Training "on the hand" is difficult and requires a lot of practice. However, if you master it, it is a very good way to train swifts that are not allowed to do climbing or flight training, for example because they are pushing new feathers. The highly sensitive blood quills would be damaged, bent, or broken during normal training. Since these "feather pushers" are usually very restless, they need a type of movement where they do not ruin their precious feathers.
First sit on a soft blanket on the floor - so nothing happens if the bird falls down! The swift is placed on the right hand, letting it hook its claws onto the index and middle fingers. With the ring and little fingers, you carefully support the body and tail from the side. The thumb rests gently on the swifts back, just firm enough to prevent it from jumping away. Carefully fixed in this position, most candidates immediately begin to flap their wings.
The trainer must now carefully ensure 1) that the bird does not wriggle out of the fingers and jump off, 2) that the rotating wings do not hit the hand, 3) that the tail feathers are not bent or kinked in the palm, 4) that their own fingers do not get into the fine secondary feathers of the swift from behind and kink them, 5) that they do not crush the bird in their hand from all the effort... - all at the same time! Hand training is clearly physiotherapy for advanced practitioners.
Other forms of physiotherapy
As with human rehabilitation, stretching exercises, acupressure, and light fingertip massages can also be performed on swifts with good success by experienced carers. Such treatments are often surprisingly willingly tolerated. However, sensitivity, empathy, and knowledge of anatomy are absolutely essential here.
How long?
Until release! Training duration and progress depend on the progress the candidate makes. Some are very quickly "back on their wings" and do skilled laps in the training room. For others, it can take weeks and months before flying ability is restored by human judgment. Particular attention should be paid to lameness and asymmetries of the wings, shoulder girdle, and flight movements. If you are unsure, the "turning test" often helps: Place the swift on its back - if it immediately turns back into the physiological belly position, the shoulder girdle is intact. If it cannot do this, if it helplessly wriggles around on its back with a half-folded wing, the prognosis is doubtful. Then it is urgently necessary to clarify radiologically what is wrong with the bird.
For the layperson, it can be very difficult to judge whether a convalescent swift is really fit for freedom again. Do not take any risks; rather transfer such birds to the Swift Clinic, where, due to many years of experience with thousands of swifts, a better assessment of injuries and their consequences is possible.
The end of the training session should always be a positive experience for the swift. So always end with a "good" flight, i.e., never with a crash, spiraling down, or a belly landing, but always with a successful upward flight into the curtain. This strengthens the birds self-confidence. Talk to it while you train it, praise it, and encourage it. By your tone of voice, it will sense exactly what you mean; your confidence will be transferred to it. Swifts are extremely sensitive!
When should training never be done?
Never do flight exercises with young swifts that are not yet fledged! Nestlings do not need training! At most, it is advisable to briefly test in the training room immediately before release whether the fledged young bird can fly. It happens again and again that you unknowingly raise a young swift that suffered an injury to the wing or shoulder girdle when it fell from the nest as a chick, and do not notice this defect during the entire rearing period. At launch, there is then a rude awakening and for the fledged swift a nasty belly landing in which it can hurt itself badly. Through a short flight test in the padded room, lameness, asymmetric wing position, etc. can still be noticed in time.
Movement or even flight exercises must also never be performed on swifts with fresh injuries, dislocations, unstable fractures, etc. Bruises are extremely painful; here you must definitely wait to begin physiotherapy until the bird starts to move the wing again on its own. Traumatized birds with concussion or in shock must also not be trained. Patients after collision sometimes need days to weeks before you can carefully try to train them. Classic for patients after collision, for example, is that during careful testing of their flying ability, they fall to the floor like a "wet sack", sometimes without any wing movement. You can test this at weekly intervals. It can take 4-6 weeks until they recover! Then, however, flying ability often returns within a few days, and the convalescents show rapid improvement in training.
Is training torture for swifts?
Quite the opposite. Most swifts that must remain in human care beyond the normal nestling period or to heal injuries have such a pronounced urge to move that they do not want to stop at all. Daily training is essential for their well-being, quite apart from the necessity of keeping joints and tendons supple and preventing muscle atrophy.
However, if a swift is noticeably listless and unwilling during training, clutches, puffs up, hides, etc., then there is a suspicion that something is wrong with it. It may, for example, be suffering from vitamin B deficiency or be in pain. It has even happened that during training, due to unusual behavior of the swift, it was discovered that the bird was blind in one eye.