In celebration of swifts

7 June 2025

It’s World Swift Day today and we’re celebrating this wonderful bird that can be seen in and around towns and villages in the North Pennines National Landscape.

With sickle-shaped, long, thin wings, their dark silhouette is easy to identify in the air; which is where they spend most of their lives. They eat, mate and even sleep on the wing, only landing to nest and rear their chicks. If you don’t recognise their shape, you’ll certainly recognise their call. The screech of a swift is high-pitched and distinctive; so much so that one of the collective nouns to describe a group of swifts is a ‘scream’. Particularly in the evenings just before the later summer sunsets, they will form ‘screaming parties’; noisy gatherings of birds flying fast and low over the rooftops.

Swifts used to nest in cavities and cracks in cliff faces and other rocky spots, but they are now most commonly seen nesting in buildings, particularly under roof tiles. Modern buildings often don’t have suitable nest sites, but you can help by installing swift boxes or bricks. Unfortunately for swifts, sparrows and other small birds are quite fond of these facilities too, and as one of the later migrants, swifts are often too late to move into these homes.

Although still a summer stalwart, the swift is under threat. The species is red-listed with numbers having declined over recent decades. There is a project called Swift Mapper (https://www.swiftmapper.org.uk) where you can record your sightings of screaming parties or nests. You can also record sightings on iRecord or iNaturalist too.