Well the swifts have come and gone again for another year. The general feeling from here and elsewhere in the country is that whilst overall populations are in a steep decline, the finer weather means this may have been a much better year for swift breeding success than last year.
Our last sighting for 2025 was 11th August (2024 -5th, 2023 – 11th, 2022 – 4th) and these were birds which had been nesting at a new site IN ONE OF OUR BOXES! As far as we can tell 2 nestlings successfully fledged.
Thank you to Graham Turner from Hexham and District Photographic Society for some lovely swift shots, not easy to capture.
Thank you of course to those intrepid surveyors who this year helped us to check known nesting sites. Here are the headline results.
Sites with previous nesting records we targeted for 2025 survey – 36
Of those sites surveyed, evidence of nesting activity this year – 21
Sites with activity in the vicinity but nesting not confirmed – 3
Sites with no obvious activity or evidence of nesting – 7 (no activity doesn’t necessarily mean no nesting, just we didnt detect any!)
Sites not surveyed – 3
Sites removed due to duplication or incorrect details – 2
New nesting sites added – 3
This has been a very successful process with only 3 out of 36 sites not surveyed. Very impressive and a sign of the commitment and enthusiasm of our surveyors. It was also helpful to clarify some records which were incorrect. Thank you. Over time we hope that repeat surveys of our known nesting sites and extending the sites surveyed, if we have sufficient surveyors, we will give us a better idea of how our swifts are doing in Hexham. Meanwhile, over the winter we will be making new swift boxes and planning for 2026.
