Can you help with the Romsey Swift Project?

If you have been in and around Romsey town centre recently, you will hopefully have seen and heard the swifts swooping and screeching, though there do seem to be fewer this year than previously. For several years, the Natural Environment Committee has been supporting and funding the installation of swift nesting boxes, to try and replace some of the nesting sites which have been lost through modernisation and repair. Those maintenance free plastic soffits prevent many swifts from accessing their old nesting sites! We have been encouraging house builders to install nesting bricks in new builds, but it’s a slow process. If you would like to install swift nesting boxes on your home, please go to the Hampshire Swifts website https://www.hampshireswifts.co.uk/nesting for help in choosing the best site and also help with supply and installation. There has been a steep decline in numbers of swifts arriving in Britain from Africa each year, partly because when they arrive they can no longer nest in their old sites. We would like to find out exactly where swifts are nesting in and around Romsey this year, so that we have a baseline to work from in future years to see what is happening to their numbers. This includes any outlying villages. Any reports of nesting swifts will be very useful.
If you have spotted swifts flying low over rooftops and/or seen them accessing their nest site, it would be really helpful to report this. You can do this at https://www.hampshireswifts.co.uk/survey
We are hoping to get a list of known swift nesting sites in Romsey that we can check on a regular basis. If you would like to help with this - and it will only be for the next couple of months as the swifts will be on their way back south in July - please get in touch with Kate Allen ([email protected]) for more details.
Any help with monitoring will be much appreciated.