Birds ·
Swifts over the square
For twelve weeks each summer the sky over the market square belongs to the swifts. A note on screaming, roofs and leaving.
4 min read
The swifts came back on the ninth of May, which is a day late.
I know this because I write it down every year, in the back of the notebook, under the dates of the previous years: the eighth, the eleventh, the seventh, the eighth. They come from Africa, and they come back to the same roofs, and you can very nearly set a calendar by them.
You hear them first. A swift sounds like a thin shriek tearing past the chimney pots, and when there are a dozen of them, chasing each other round the chapel tower at dusk, it sounds like the whole square is being let out of school.
A mile up
What I find hardest to believe about swifts is not the distance but the not landing. They don’t, except to nest. They eat on the wing, drink on the wing, and sleep on the wing, a mile up, and come down only to the eaves where they were born. A young swift that leaves the nest may not touch anything solid for two years.
I think about this when I am lying awake. Somewhere above the town, in the dark, there are birds asleep in the air.
Leaving
They leave in early August, all at once and without ceremony. One evening the square is screaming; the next it is just a square. Every year I miss the day, and every year I notice the silence a week too late and feel I should have said something.
This year I will stand in the square on the evenings of early August and watch for the last one. I will probably miss it again. But I will be there, which is the most you can do for anything that is leaving.
