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The UK Bird Atlas

Little Swift (Apus affinis)Where and when to see it in the UK

Scarce migrant · reporting peaks November · Swifts · BOU category A

Records to 2026-08-16 · build 2026-08-31

Little Swift (Apus affinis)
Francesco Veronesi from Italy, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Too few records to rate squares by month. Each marked square has at least one record; the table below gives the count and years.

Little Swift: relative reporting rate by 10 km square, September

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (grid squares, place names from OS Open Names). Northern Ireland place names: OSNI Open Data, OGL v3.0. County and country boundaries: Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Coastline: Natural Earth. Bird records from the data partners listed here.

Little Swift has been recorded in 13 of the 2,971 10 km squares covering UK land (0%) in records to 2026. Scarce migrant in the UK. Reporting peaks in November.

Conservation status: Least Concern (IUCN Red List, LC)
View on the IUCN Red List

Records by 10 km square

SquareWhereRecordsYearsVerified
SV91Isles of Scilly, England22002 to 2021unverified
NZ53Hartlepool, England132018unverified
NZ52Redcar and Cleveland, England12018unverified
NT77East Lothian, Scotland12015unverified
SJ39Liverpool, England422012unverified
SJ68Warrington, England32008unverified
SE40Barnsley, England22008unverified
TG24Norfolk, England202005unverified
SJ56Cheshire West and Chester, England12005unverified
SV90Isles of Scilly, England22002unverified
SK64Nottinghamshire, England492001unverified
SK53Nottinghamshire, England12001unverified
SU30Hampshire, England12000unverified

Spotted an error in a square? Report it and it goes into the review queue. Read the methodology for how classes, flags and sensitive-species rules work. Data to 2026.