A survey of screaming swifts was carried out in and around Cambridge in 2002 by the City Greenways Project. This simple survey asked people to send in records of screaming swift groups observed on summer evenings. It found lots of small groups of active screaming swifts and also some larger groups - these are all likely to relate to colonies - and scattered throughout the whole city and surrounding area.
The City Greenways Project are teaming up with the Bird Club to repeat and refine this survey, to try and find out about breeding swifts in and around Cambridge.
There is a general feeling that Swifts may be declining, and have problems finding suitable nesting holes in modern buildings and refurbished old ones. We hope to be able to find out what kinds of buildings are being used in the Cambridge area, and how many swifts we have using them.
One of the best ways to find swift colonies is to count "screaming" swifts in the evening, as they feed and come into their breeding colonies. This is very easy to do from the park, the garden or even the pub's patio!
We want to be able to count screaming swifts low down in the air - noisy, and chasing each other around, and count them separately from those very high in the sky. The former are likely to be near their breeding colony, whilst the latter are more likely to be feeding and then moving to somewhere else.
The third thing we want you to watch for is whether they actually go to a specific building - a nesting site - and try and define what kinds of buildings are being used across the Cambridge area. If they do not, it doesn't matter, - it just means the building is somewhere nearby but not in your street!
We have devised a survey which is simple, but which should tell us a lot, and which is also repeatable every 2 - 3 years to give numbers, and hopefully an indication of how Swift populations are doing over the years.
We start counting swifts at the end of May - by this time birds should be back at their colonies and not just passing through. The breeding season is very short, and by mid July some colonies have dispersed already - most do so by the end of July. Therefore, this survey runs only until early July. We want people to count Swifts from a fixed location once a week for 6 weeks over the summer, for 10 - 15 minutes, and record the maximum number seen on each occasion. This is easily something you can do on your doorstep, or coming back from the gym or wherever.
You can choose anywhere, but it needs to be somewhere that you can be at roughly the same time each week from late May to early July It can be a park, the end of the street, or wherever you regularly go - you may even have somewhere in mind that you regularly see swifts. If you do not want to choose a location, we have several places which were highlighted in the previous survey as significant for swifts, which we will be happy to allocate to people.
WhenThe first count should be in the week commencing Saturday 20th May 2006, and your counts should then be about a week apart for the next 5 weeks, giving 6 counts in total. Try and keep your counting day the same, or only 1-2 days different, with a minimum of 5 days between counts and a maximum of 10 days. Obviously, counts should not be made during rain. Time of day - between 7.00pm and 8.30 pm. The duration of your count should be 15 minutes from one location
What We would like you to make an assessment of 4 things during your count period on each occasion:If you see swifts actually using a building, we would like you to tell us about the building, its human use (church, industrial, shop, Victorian terrace house, etc), and if possible, which bit the swifts are using (roof, hole in wall, ventilation system, window, etc).
At the end of the count period, send us your results, giving the exact details of location (a street or grid reference would be ideal). We have provided a sheet below for you to fill in.
Iain Webb, Cambridge City Greenways Project, Louise Bacon, CBC Research Officer
Contact Iain Webb on 01954 713531 or iain.webb@wildlifebcnp.org
Contact Louise Bacon on 01954 713570 or louise.bacon2@btinternet.com
The details that we need are below, or you can download the instructions and survey form as a rich text format (RTF) document.
Cambridge City Greenways Project and Cambridgeshire Bird Club
Observer
Location
Grid reference if known
| Count number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Date | ||||||
| Time | ||||||
| Number of swifts seen screaming, low | ||||||
| Number of swifts seen high | ||||||
| Number of swifts seen using a building | ||||||
|
Weather - select from options below up to three (x, y, z) Weather please select the nearest to your conditions: 1 Still 2 breezy 3 windy 4 clear, 5 cloudy , 6 humid, 7 drizzle, 8 post-rain |
Were swifts seen actually going into a building or part of a building?
If so, what sort of building: (e.g. House, industrial/commercial building, university/college /church building)
Was there a particular component of the building? (e.g. ventilation shaft, window, roofing)