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The swifts of summer


Out on a run yesterday I was passed by a solitary swift, one of the few left in this part of the world. It described a tight arc in the air and I was struck, as I am every time I see one by the curve and grace of its flight, the elegant lines of its wings, in Edward Thomas’ words “as if the bow had taken off with the arrow”.

There was a tinge of sadness, a couple of weeks ago the swift would have had a dozen or more companions, but slowly they disappear. Like the last Test match of summer, there’s an air of melancholy attached to the last swifts of the year. Each spring I look forward to their piercing, shrill shrieks (so at odds with the beauty of their movement) as a harbinger of longer days and softer air and, bang on cue, as they start to leave the wind starts to get up, the showers grow slightly more chill, the air becomes fresh. You can watch the seasons roll in and out behind their tail-feathers. Time was it was a pleasant surprise, these days I can track their progress up the country in Tweets.

Their scientific name Apus means footless, and it was a long-held belief that the bird had no feet as it seemed to spend all its time in the air, where few birds look at home as the Swift, the briefly visiting symbol of our fugitive summer. Until next year, then.

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