The Swifts are coming 2026: BirdNet & BirdWeather

A slow trickle of swifts are returning to Britain

but by the end of this month, it will be a flood.

So its time to switch on our swift-caller & keep an eye on our 3 nests!

I don't completely believe every detection reported by my BirdNet-Pi. But on 27th March, mid-morning, it recorded the first swift call of the year.

So I opened BirdWeather, and checked our two closest stations: Sindlesham (about 2.75 miles west) and Barnham (about 5.75 miles north-east).

There used to be a closer station, here in Aldwick, but that seems to be missing from the map.

I put the results from these 2 stations & my BirdNet-Pi on a spreadsheet, and plotted a graph...

 

These results are only for detections => 80% confidence.

The reason only one of my BirdNet-Pi detections is included, is because I switched on my Swift Caller the following day.

Although, as I mentioned eariler, I don't have 100% confidence in my BirdNet-Pi, I think the inclusion of 2 other local stations does validate the overall conclusion that swifts started to return to my local area in March this year.

BirdWeather

Doing this exercise makes me realise how useful BirdWeather can be in validating my system's results.

BirdWeather works well on a laptop, but I find it painful on a phone. It also has an API and I've started playing around with this.

I guess I should really add my BirdNet-Pi to BirdWeather, but there are 3 issues I need to consider first;

1. Common Names: BirdNet-Pi includes a number of language files with 'common names' for each bird species. Great, except the common name for a European Robin in Britain is: Robin. So in my system, I've dropped all prefixes that use the words European, Eurasian & common.
2. Swift detections: as I use a swift-caller, my swift counts are crazy high from April - August.
3. Security: what are the security implications of hanging my BirdNet-Pi on the internet?

To overcome the first issue, I could reconfigure my 2nd BirdNet-Pi (previously used for testing against BirdNet-Go) to use standard common names. Audio would be streamed from my existing Pi as before, so no need for an additional microphone & USB adapter.

For the second issue, I could put swift on the excluded list ...not ideal.

As for security, I just need to do some homework!

 

Some useful links:-

BirdNET-Pi to Monitor Bird Calls

 - this is a great Australian educational site which includes sample Python code for BirdWeather API

 

BirdWeather API Documentation

 - the API reference

BirdWeather Online Query Tool

 - try out commands & syntax on this site