Swift ©David Tipling/2020VISION
Building a swift picture
Can you help carry out a swift survey?
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.
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.
Common swift (Apus apus) screaming party silhouetted against the sky as they fly in formation over cottage roofs at dusk, Lacock, Wiltshire, UK, June 2018. - Nick Upton