UK SAW2026 Update No. 1 at 9th April

[Nick Brown]

Hi Everyone As the first swifts arrive back in the UK, now might be a good time to get your UK Swift Awareness Week 2026 events organised, ie before the birds reappear at your local nest sites in early May. Last year there were over 100 events which was an excellent result so we hope for a similar if not greater number this time! The dates this year are Saturday 27th June to Sunday 5th July 2026 inclusive. PLEASE NOTE Things are different this year because Peta Sams will receive the details of your events and add them to the national list which will appear on the Action for Swifts blog as usual. This list is then used by RSPB who help to promote our events and Peta is going to try to map events too so that people can see what is happening near them. Nick will continue to 'coordinate' the week, liaise with any media, deal with any queries e.g.  from newcomers to SAW and send out regular reminders to SLN members to get their events organised during the next couple of months and ideally asap!   IMPORTANT NOTE for EVENT ORGANISERS In the past, despite there being an event form, Nick received event details from many organisers in all manner of formats from posters to long explanations. Each one required re-formatting which was tedious and time consuming. This year, events will only be accepted for the national list if they are entered via the Google form which can be accessed via the following link -   https://tinyurl.com/SAW2026eventregistration . The form is designed to collect information about a wide range of events from active walks to static displays. If you find any issues please contact Peta using her SLN address (swiftsloc...@gmail.com) and not her personal one. If you have general queries about the week, eg about what sort of event or 'action' to organise or how to generate publicity, then please get in touch with Nick using his gmail address (brown...@gmail.com) . To see the national list click on Action for Swifts and then on the SAW logo though there are no events listed so far. UK SAW 2026 LOGO: Please use the national logo on all your local publicity. This is very important as it will show that your local event is part of a big national push to raise awareness of swifts across the UK during the week. For a high res version of the logo click on the logo at the top of the SAW blog page and it opens in another window. If you then 'right click>save image as' you get the full high resolution version (1600 x 1100). If for some reason you don't want the dates to show you can simply crop the image. Best wishes Nick Brown (UK SAW Coordinator) and Peta Sams (UK SAW Events Manager) Ps. The next Update will discuss Events vs. Actions mainly for newcomers to SAW.