Swift City

Swifts spend more time airborne than any other bird on earth. They sleep, drink and mate on the wing, only landing to nest. When they come home, they come home to us, returning to the exact nesting sites each year.

Swifts have adapted to nesting in nooks and cavities in our buildings but now their nest sites are being inadvertently blocked up by us on a national scale, through insulation and repairs. 

Durham Wildlife Trust has been working with others to install more swift boxes and bricks across Durham and beyond, building homes for returning swifts to occupy.

There are a number of ways you can support our Durham Swift City project.

Building a swift picture 

You can find out where swift boxes have already been installed on the map below as well as logging locations of existing swift nest sites.

You can also help the Trust continue its important work for swifts by suggesting locations for further installations and telling us where you have seen swifts nesting. 

Complete our swift city form.

Durham Swift City survey 2026

Can you help carry out a swift survey in Durham City this summer?   We are looking for volunteers to take part in a survey in the city between May and July. 

Click here to volunteer

Each survey team of two will be allocated a designated route covering two to three streets and asked to survey the route in each of the three months in the three hours before dusk in good weather when swifts are most active.  A slow survey following your designated route should take approximately 40 minutes.

The information you collect will be used to identify the best locations in 2027 to create ‘swift streets’, where homeowners are encouraged to put up swift boxes and install swift call players so that swifts can find the boxes. 

We hope to create enough ‘swift streets’ to justify calling Durham City the first ‘Swift City’ in the North East so that swifts are once again a common sight gliding across the city’s rooftops.

Calling all builders

If you are or were a builder, could you help us install swift bricks or erect swift nest boxes on commercial and private properties across the Trust’s operational area? 

We are looking for builders willing to help on a commercial or volunteer basis to help put up boxes and swift bricks in their local area so that we can create more nesting opportunities for swifts. 

For builders willing to consider this work on a commercial basis, we would group these small jobs together in one area so that they would be commercially viable.

The refurbishment of properties with plastic soffits and fascias has dramatically reduced the traditional nest sites of swifts and is responsible in part to swift numbers declining by almost 70% in the past 30 years. 

If you think you could help, please email us with your details and someone will get back to you. 

Recycle your old USB plugs

If you have a redundant USB plug, then please donate it next time you are visiting Rainton Meadows or Low Barns. 

We will make good use of these with the swift call players we are installing to advertise the new swift homes (swift boxes) we are putting up across the Trust operational area.

By donating your unwanted plug, you will be doing your bit to reverse the decline of swifts in our region!