Like night follows day, every Swift breeding season is characterised by the discovery that renovation work over the winter has blocked off Swift nest sites or a contractor erects scaffolding on a building with active Swift nests, so preventing their access. Both scenarios are distressing for the Swifts, and any onlooking Swift enthusiasts, as the birds keep trying to gain access to their nest sites. Resolving such problems, perhaps by installing boxes to mitigate for nest site loss or adjusting or even removing the scaffolding to allow access, can take a lot of time, emotional energy, can be costly and also risks damaging potentially useful relationships with neighbours or contractors.
Swift nests are notoriously difficult to locate and many householders are unaware they have Swifts nesting on their properties so it is perhaps inevitable that these problems will occur from time to time. However, in areas where Swifts are known to breed, there is potential to prevent such problems by actively locating and recording the exact location of Swift nests. Since Swifts exhibit very high fidelity to their nest sites these locations are extremely valuable in the context of Swift conservation as a protected nest site will be used well into the future.
Many of you will rightly ask why we need yet another way to record Swifts? County ornithological societies encourage the submission of records as does the BTO BirdTrack application but neither of these is designed to record the exact location of nest sites. The RSPB started the Swift Inventory, a web-based record form designed for this purpose, and this has now been replaced by SwiftMapper, a slick application which can be used in the field, allowing observers to enter the location of nest boxes, active nest sites, screaming parties and also nest sites which are no longer in use. The RSPB states that “By telling us where you see nesting swifts you’ll help to build a picture of where swift nest sites need to be protected and where it would be best to provide new nest sites”.
SwiftMapper is well-designed and compatible with desktops as well as on mobile phones. The data entry process is quick and easy and results in data being mapped instantaneously. However, we have 2 issues with the design of the application.
- Firstly, to record a nest site location, the observer places a marker onto a map of the area, without any need to record the address of the building in question. In our view, having 2 sources of information which can be cross-referenced to validate the record adds an additional level of confidence in the data, so not having an address is a significant weakness.
- Secondly, despite the statement above, it’s unclear how SwiftMapper data are actually used to achieve these objectives . These records are not submitted to county biodiversity databases and so valuable information on exactly where Swifts are breeding is not being made available to ecologists or developers.
For these reasons, we are launching the Derbyshire Swift survey. This is based on the successful Hampshire Swift survey which has now been active for 7 years and has accumulated over a thousand nest site locations, see below. The only other county survey is a joint project between Suffolk Wildlife Trust and Suffolk Bird Group.
By entering the location of screaming parties and Swift nest sites, either through the efforts of survey teams across the county or single records entered by observers, we can build up a map of where Swifts nest. These records will be displayed as an interactive map available freely on our website at the end of the season and will also be uploaded by the Derbyshire Biological Records Centre. This is the biodiversity database that Derbyshire planners have to consult when considering permissions and mitigations associated with new building developments. We will also offer our dataset to the RSPB on an annual basis.
In our view, collating Swift nest site data across Derbyshire will give us immediate access to the high quality data needed to support planning applications, mitigate renovation work, target further surveys, assist in identifying where nest boxes schemes should be initiated and will also increase public awareness of what we trying to achieve.
We need your help to achieve a comprehensive overview of where Swifts are nesting in Derbyshire