A huge thanks to our volunteer Swift champion Kathleen for this guest blog
After visiting Bradwell for their swift walk in 2023, I decided to install swift boxes on my house in Tideswell and started looking for nests in the village as there were groups of swifts screaming above the houses every evening.
To my surprise in 2024, I identified 20 occupied swift nests in 16 houses within 0.5 mile of my house! Each evening I set out surveying and identified at least one new nest. The excitement of catching the swifts entering a newly found nest is addictive and still sends a tingle down my spine when I find one. They are so quick and silent that most people have no idea they are nesting there. I have lived in Tideswell for 30 years and had never seen one entering a house before 2024.
One of the houses I identified was under-going renovations during the nesting season and had scaffolding installed around the swift nest. Fortunately the swift could still enter it’s nest and as soon as the building owner realised, he stopped work on the building to minimise disruption until the nesting season was completed.
In 2025, Derbyshire Dales Swift Project was started and by mid-June Tideswell had it’s own team of local volunteers surveying the key areas of Tideswell. The team found 10 new nest sites on 9 houses. During the survey the risk to the nest is assessed and we identified around a third of them were potentially under threat. During the winter 2025, one of these properties had the swift nest hole blocked due to essential repair work and another was put at risk due to a new roof installation. Swifts often nest under the eaves of buildings which are not in perfect repair – finding tiny holes underneath the gutters between the house wall and the roof tiles. Identifying the current nesting locations and installing swift boxes to provide alternative locations is important to help support these red listed birds.
Now the initial swift nest ‘hot spots & streets’ have been located in Tideswell, Derbyshire Swift Conservation are mitigating future loss of natural nests by installing swift nests and bricks. In April 2026, 15 swift boxes & 3 swift bricks alongside 8 swift callers were installed in these Tideswell ‘hot spot’ areas. Mark - pictured above - is one of the residents who had a swift brick installed. At the end of the 2026 nesting season we will re-assess the nesting patterns and add further nesting boxes to the village based on the data gathered by our surveyors.
Tideswell’s second swift walk is scheduled for 8:30pm, Wednesday 24 June 2026 – meeting at Fountain Square, Tideswell. I’m hoping we will see as many swifts as we saw on the first walk in 2025 - around 10 nest entries & exits on a lovely, warm summer evening. Anyone is welcome to join the Tideswell swift walk and I hope it will provide others with the spark to setup swift surveying in their village as joining the Bradwell swift walk in 2023 did for myself.
Derbyshire Dales Swift Project is installing boxes and bricks in Swift hotspots across the region and we need more people to sign up for boxes in Wirksworth and Youlgreave for 2026. The project is made possible thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Breedon Group. If you live in one of these villages and would like to find out more, please complete our expression of interest form: https://derbyshireswiftconservation.org/nest-box