How could anyone get fed up of swifts? I was once asked by a group of doctors to talk about ‘how to be creative’ in between everything else that was going on, about finding the time to write. One of the examples I gave - among other writers’ practices - was my own diaries off the back of having swifts nesting in the eaves of our house. After the presentation, someone came up to Jo and asked her why we hadn’t got pest control in to sort the problem out. That punter would have no truck with all these airy meditations.
Swifts are endlessly fascinating. However, and I will say this sotto voce so it doesn’t travel far, there are times in the summer when I can take the presence of swifts for granted. They become just a part of the sky’s furniture. You can see this in the diary entries themselves. In 2021 the posts petered out soon after I completed the run of poems for Swift Awareness Week (see last week’s correspondence). You’ll see a couple more entries bubble up this week and next. But once I knew the birds were feeding the chicks that year I think I became less observant - or more relaxed, and stopped recording their comings and goings. I was probably still watching but I had run out of words. In 2024 by the end of June I thought there were no chicks in the nest. Sometimes I wondered even if there was a swift in the house. The weather was really lousy last year which also contributed to my funk (it only really got hot in August and by then the swifts had already departed). I came to the conclusion there was one swift that came to and fro - sometimes two. Again, there aren’t many entries from the diary for July 2024. The ones I do make are summaries of what I believe to be a poor year for the Crookes swifts. With this mind, you’ll see me lean more into 2025 entries for July and August.
One of the issues around mid-to-late swift season and not wholly engaging with the birds is seeing how little they seem to hang around. I used to notice (particularly in 2021) how swifts did a lot of feeding of chicks early in the morning. There was a big gap in the middle of the day, and then there was some action again in the evening. Maybe swifts did return at noon but I just wasn’t around to see them. I think there are times now, in late June, when I have to actively go looking for swifts. At the beginning of the month there were heaps of them - the ‘second wave’ - but that seems to have quietened down now.
When I sat out on Wednesday I witnessed something that could easily have passed me by. It was an evening when two swifts closely followed each other into the nest at about 9:30pm (I’ve seen this happen before recently - see my diary entry for June 9th). The two birds cried to each other and/or to their chicks, and then the two birds tipped out of the nest about five minutes later. At about 9:50pm one swift returned for the night. I waited around for the other swift to materialise but by 10:20pm all the light had been sucked from the sky and the partner was nowhere to be seen. What had happened to the second swift?
And today, after writing about seeing hardly any swifts during the day, I turned the corner of the street this morning and saw a whole bunch of them flying over Bradley Street.
Yes, swifts are endlessly fascinating.
Here are some of the notes I’ve posted over the last week taken from 2021, 2024 and 2025, with some added extras:
June 22nd 2024
The Rose and Crown near Tetley Lock. We’ve walked from the Fitties along the coast from Cleethorpes. There are swifts, at least four (maybe just four) - and these peeling swift boxes on the pub’s facade. I see a bird flying into one of the two boxes. They circle over our heads. Some practice feeding chicks on a house along - though one grips onto the guttering and actually looks like it’s feeding a baby bird.
June 23rd 2021
‘The swifts are frisky tonight.’ If I don’t look up or out the window I won’t see the swifts that are there. Sometimes they disappear for hours - sometimes I forget they are there, but then they spin above my head, above the rooftops. I catch them. Slipknots unravelling before my eyes.
June 23rd 2024
A whole squadron of swifts. Some break off leaving three then four birds to break the roofs. Then the other birds return again crisscrossing over our heads in all directions. Our swift flits into the nest at 9:45pm.
June 23rd 2025
A quiet night. Now that the heat has gone so have a lot of the swifts. I sit out in the wind and murk for half an hour and barely see a bird. A seagull, then a blackbird that doesn’t raise its voice. At 9:44pm a swift appears from nowhere, scribbling fast up the road, and clings to the wooden strut on the roof for an instant. It fires off again, circles houses, then zips back in, this time disappearing into song.
June 24th 2021
It’s a murky night though being mid-summer the light still illuminates the clouds, there is a clarity to the evening. A blackbird sits on the roof of a house opposite, down the street - and entertains me for fifteen, twenty minutes - with its band frequencies. At 9:52pm a swift snakes into the nest, a little wiggle, an s shaped arrival. Then at 9:56pm another swift swoops in - more extravagant, dipping and rising into the nest. Immediately a swift leaves the nest and flies low over the roof opposite - the street lamp across the road comes on at 9.58pm - a rumble overhead - a plane’s engine fills the sky. Then at 10:08pm the swift returns - slips through dusk and disappears.
June 24th 2025
On my run around Barnsley, about 4k in I run beside the Fleets football pitches and the fishing lake. No more than ten metres above me are swifts - six or seven of them. They jink to and fro above the paths and trees then veer off toward the water.
June 25th 2021
I was out earlier in the day - a persistent drizzle, now with the rain getting heavier my keyboard is sticky to the touch. I bring the computer inside - am writing this in the utility room now. The only constant between then and now is the blackbird’s song. Earlier I saw a blackbird, pigeon and sparrow forming a triptych on our neighbour’s roof as I looked out of the landing window. The swifts are present by their absence. The male blackbirds don’t mind getting wet with their Mohican feathers, their burly songs.
June 25th 2025
The swifts circle low with the heavy air in the morning.
This evening the swifts arc high.
Two swifts enter the nest at 9:30pm, and cry away to each other. They tip out of the nest ten minutes later to skim the dusk. At about 9:50pm one returns. I wait until all the light drains from the sky and the other bird doesn’t.
June 26th 2025
At work all day. No swifts to speak of.
June 27th 2024
I go out at about 9:40pm to catch a swift but the wind is up and it’s turned colder so I think I’ve missed its entrance. I do see one swift wobbling over our house - its wings quivering - yes - like a compass needle.
June 27th 2025
I sit out and watch the westerly wind drag clouds across the sky. There are no swifts to be seen. After about ten minutes a swift drops out from nowhere and vanishes under the roof. It sings and stops as soon as it has begun. Not long after I see one swift, and then another, small in the huge expanse. They dance and sway together like it’s already the last song of the party.
June 28th 2025
I’m up early and go outside, watching three swifts swinging low over the neighbourhood. At 8:30am there’s a swift in the nest singing to its brood(?) It slips out and disappears over the rooftops. At 9:45am I’m walking home from the shops and ten or so swifts are circling over Bradley Street like it’s early June all over again.
Thanks for reading this post. If you want to read my published work, including Little Piece Of Harm - which, like these swift diaries, is a kind of love letter to a city, you can find details on the Longbarrow Press website here. I also have a podcast where I interview poets about influence and poetics: The Two-Way Poetry Podcast. The two seasons of interviews are available on Podbean here.