Swift Diaries

Time is what it is

Come late April, early May the Radio 6 presenter Gideon Coe reads out listeners’ messages announcing if any swifts have arrived back in Shrewsbury say, or Kent or Bolton, from their long migratory routes. Coe casually makes these announcements each springtime in between other bits of news: they form part of the fabric of the show. On one side, Coe is constantly playing new tunes, endlessly looking up and ahead, and on the other, he builds into his broadcasts repeated patterns that give the content a deeper structure (he plays a lot of archive sessions as well, which heightens this balance between original material and inbuilt historical refrains). When we tune-in to hear if swifts have arrived in both the real and (our) imagined worlds of Glasgow or Hucknall it comes to us live, in the moment, but also, as veteran patrons of the show, we reach back to other years’ reports - which reassure us (this sense of continuity) and also makes us think of how a year has passed us by.

We are coming to a point now when the fragile continuity we gained over the summer will be broken. Last year, my final view of swifts entering the nest was on August 8th. I heard and saw a few swifts after this date but these birds seemed to be passing through. On Friday night (the last evening of July), I stepped onto the road to watch two swifts cut the air and disappear under our eaves at 9.19pm. I’m still gobsmacked at the speed at which they hit the crack in the wall, a blink-and-you-miss-it dive (other swifts over the years have been more circumspect). If I assiduously stood watch each dusk I might see this ritual for another week - but it’s unlikely I’ll be this observant. Stuff/life will get in the way. At some point I’ll go out and there won’t be that arc of wings that almost flicks the crab apple tree, then that subtle correction in the flight path under or over the wires so the bird will hit the crumbling cleft full-on. Our house at night will weigh just that little bit less.

I usually intuit the larger community of swifts have left for the year not so much by what is seen but by what is (or isn’t) heard. The wider frequencies of bird songs have already all-but-vanished from our neighbourhood: we still get the occasional caw, coo coos or a magpie’s cackle. The swifts are — as I write — screaming over Bradley Street and Slinn Street, and because they have less auditory competition, because there is less interference, I focus even more attentively on their compressed dispatches. I am literally counting time. Because, as the poet Ken Smith once wrote, reflecting on his stint working as a writer in HMP Wormwood Scrubs: Time is what it is.

Now, when I measure the swifts’ angled music as they pitch over the streets, I am adding to (adding up) another summer’s inventory of experiences, and I am already calculating the stillness that I’ll feel in these birds’ wake.

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Here are the diary entries I have written this week:

27th July

I’m in the car most of the day. Glasgow is dull and overcast when we arrive. Although it does have a swift presence, I’ve yet to spot a bird in my time here. The flock of pigeons bunched in the car park of the Lidl is the nearest I get to an avian rumble.

28th July

It’s always the same each year. After a few days of not seeing any swifts, I think they’ve left for the year. But at 9pm this evening, the sky is quick with them. They fly higher until, under grey cloud, we can’t pick them out, but can hear them like they were here, hanging over the garden.

29th July

Another late show. The sky is almost drained of light and we can still hear swifts. They sing to each other in the murk until the sky flattens into one or two colours and there is no more signalling. The bat takes over - flexing and curving low over the trees.

30th July

Mid-morning and there’s a bunch of swifts mixing speed and space over the neighbourhood, their impromptu annotations on the air making for some urgent music.

31st July

Three shapes, more shine than birds, skim over the garage - startling me even toward the end of their stay.

1st August

We see one creature tonight threading the eye of the house’s needle. Light softens into darkness. I look up and just for a moment I take the high aeroplane flying south to be a swift.