Dear Readers, last year I wrote a post about watching the swifts on our road here in East Finchley – they kept flying up into the eaves of buildings as if looking for a nest site, and finding nothing. Fortunately the scaffolding at my house has given me a chance to pop up a swift nesting box, and if any birds show an interest I shall certainly be adding some more.

You are not supposed to have favourites, but swifts are right up there with my favourite birds. Maybe it’s because they stay for such a short time. It might be because they are the most aerial of land birds, never touching the ground, flying, feeding, mating in the air. Maybe it’s because they’re such harum-scarum hooligan birds, almost daring one another to see how close they can come to the pavement, the rush of wings lifting your hair. But they having a breeding population decline of 66% since the 1950s, largely due to the decline in their insect prey, upon which they are completely dependent, and the loss of breeding sites. Hence the swift box. I am keeping everything crossed that they like it (though a friend tells me that her swift box is home to house sparrows. As they are also a Red List species, I wouldn’t be too upset.

I once had a cat who belied her fluffy, slow-witted appearance with the hunting instincts of a velociraptor. One day I came downstairs to find that she had deposited a live swift in her food bowl. I couldn’t believe it at first – I could only assume that the bird had been skimming the patio and got unlucky. What an extraordinary creature it was, close up – almond-shaped eyes, scimitar wings and tiny feet. I took it to a wildlife sanctuary, where they pronounced it unharmed, and thought that it could go free after a night to recover. After that, I kept the cat in when I heard the swifts about, but they are one of the few birds who are not much affected by these furry predators.

What to do? Well, swifts nest overwhelmingly in areas of human habitation. On my road I’ve started a campaign to encourage people to stick up a swift box when they’re having renovations done (which on my road is pretty much constant), and a few kind souls have already agreed. I was inspired by Hannah Bourne-Taylor, a tireless, indefatigable campaigner on behalf of swifts, who has been trying to get the government to mandate the inclusion of swift bricks in every new development.  Why is it so hard to get the smallest of changes enacted on behalf of wildlife? But with this, at least, there’s something we can try to do.

For those of us who might be yearning to hear the swift again, here are some from Sweden (with a cuckoo in the background for good measure). You can hear the rush of wings.

And finally, a poem, one I hadn’t come across before, by Anne Stevenson. See what you think.

Swifts

By Anne Stevenson

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.
The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.
But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child
You shout, ‘The swifts are back!’

Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther
Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.
Swereee swereee. Another. And another.
It’s the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.

The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.
These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.
But a shift of wing, and they’re earth-skimmers, daggers
Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.

Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for
Earth is forbidden to them, water’s forbidden to them,
All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,
They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.

Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —
When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,
The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things
Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,

So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.
And they stayed there. ‘Well,’ said the Raven, after years of this,
‘I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky
On condition that you give up rest.’

‘Yes, yes,’ screamed the swifts, ‘We abhor rest.
We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,
Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.
Let us be free, be air!’

So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.
He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.
He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.
Then he released them, Never to Return

Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so
We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but
Bolts in the world’s need: swift
Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world’s breathing.
The grace to say they live in another firmament.
A way to say the miracle will not occur,
And watch the miracle.