Let’s keep it a hundred: loyalty is hard to find these days, but the common swift is putting everyone to shame. A brand new 15-year study just dropped from the RSPB, and it proves these little birds are more dedicated to their home blocks than most people. While the government and big-money developers are out here doing them dirty, these birds are flying thousands of miles every year just to pull up to the exact same spot they left.

But the streets are cold, and the swifts are paying the price. Since 1995, their population has tanked by 70%. Why? Because when people renovate old buildings, put on new roofs, or add insulation, they block up all the small spots where these birds build their homes. They are basically gentrifying the birds out of their own neighborhoods, leaving them red-listed and struggling to survive.

To get the real data, scientists spent 15 years in a Devon village called Drewsteignton, tracking 190 swifts across 243 nests. They put numbered rings on their legs so they could see exactly who was returning where. The results? A massive 94% of these birds returned to the exact same nesting spot. But when it came to their partners, only 59% stayed together. No cap, these birds are loyal to the block, not the relationship. They will swap out their mate before they swap out their zip code, and nest cameras even caught them getting into straight-up fistfights over who gets the best nest box.

Malcolm Burgess, the lead scientist on the project, said this is the first time they’ve got hard proof of how loyal these birds are to their spots. He made it clear: if we don’t protect their nesting spots on our streets, we’re going to lose the sound of summer in our cities for good.

The wild part is, the fix is incredibly cheap. All it takes is a £35 "swift brick"—literally a hollow brick that goes into new buildings so the birds have a place to stay. Scotland already made this mandatory this year because it’s a no-brainer. But over in England, the politicians are playing games. The new Labour government completely backed out on their promise to support the £35 brick rule, leaving developers free to build without caring about the local wildlife.

Without real laws protecting them, the birds are getting caught in the middle. In Derbyshire, the community had to go wild on Network Rail just to get them to reopen blocked nesting holes in a railway viaduct. Meanwhile, in Dorking, Surrey, contractors literally demolished an ancestral nesting home while the birds were trying to breed. That's straight disrespect.