Goathland Swifts Project: 2026 Update

The Goathland Swifts project was started by Goathland Nature Group to encourage an increase in the swift population within the Goathland Parish. What an amazing effort by all involved! 36 swift nest boxes have been made from scratch and put up on houses all around Goathland village. There were already two small colonies known in the village and we hope to increase their numbers significantly over the next few years. It may well take three to four years before we see the full results.

Swifts are on the UK Red List of birds of highest conservation concern, with numbers declining dramatically in recent decades. You can read more about swifts and their conservation status on the RSPB website, here. A major cause of this is a significant reduction in nest sites. Providing swift nest boxes was seen as a direct and effective way to help our swifts.

Four carpentry parties have been held to make the swift nest boxes and six sessions to put them up on the houses. We also purchased, and made up, ten swift callers for those properties interested in using them to attract swifts.

A huge thank you to all involved. It has been great to see how the local residents have really become enthusiastic about Project Swift with an increasing list of requests for more nest boxes. We may just have to make more next year!

We have subsequently assessed how well the nest boxes faired this year. We contacted the owners of the 25 properties where boxes were installed. 20 of the boxes are located within the village, with the remaining 15 dotted further afield around the Goathland Parish. Seven properties used the swift callers which seemed a very successful way of enticing swifts to visit the property. Once word got out about their success more houses have asked to have swift callers next year!

26 properties reported seeing swifts in their vicinity with seven of these appearing to visit the actual nest box. Not surprisingly, of the boxes we put up, there was no swift nesting this year. We would hope that young birds from this year may consider nesting in our boxes over the next few years. We will continue to monitor occupancy.

The boxes were however put to good use by other wildlife within the village. Ten boxes were used as nest sites for house sparrows or starlings and one was actually used by a wasp colony!

As a base line record of the local swift population, we decided to undertake a survey. On a balmy evening in July six members of Goathland Nature participated in this half hour-long survey. There were 123 sightings of swifts during that time. As Goathland is a fairly small area, we assumed that we were undoubtedly counting the same birds on a regular basis. However, we did think that there were separate parties at different sites as in this graph:

Our estimate is that there were at least 41 swifts present in Goathland that evening. Hopefully by repeating this survey technique on an annual basis we will show how successful Goathland Project Swift has been.

One of the aims of the Goathland Nature Group is:

 “to help conserve, enhance and manage the local environment for the benefit of present and future generations”

 We hope that if we can increase the swift population around Goathland we should certainly fulfil this.

To read more about the Goathland Swifts project visit our project page: click here.

To read our regular updates throughout the year visit our Swift Project blogs: click here.