The end of May can open like a door (or window) into June. In both 2021 and 2024 significant things happened around my encounters with swifts in the transition from spring to meteorological summer. In 2021 I was so downbeat about swifts not inhabiting the roof space in our house, I stopped writing my diary around mid-May. It was only after I returned off holiday in early June that I looked up again and felt that something had changed. The entry for June 6th 2021 (below) gives you a flavour of that moment when I realised that we had gained a family. Last year the situation was slightly more complicated in that I kept only seeing one swift entering the nest throughout May. I dragged up memories, like some rufous zinc bucket from a well, that led me to believe that this had been a pattern in previous seasons. One swift for a week, two weeks, then the partner screamed into view. The day I got back off from our travels in 2024, after unpacking all the gubbins from boot and roof box, I saw things differently. I imagined that the two swifts hanging over our house were connected - and lo it came to pass: one followed the other through the cranny in the brickwork (see my note below for June 2nd 2024).
This year any sign of a ‘second wave’ in early June has been muddled (or should that be muddied) by a week of showers, cloudbursts, occasional constant rain. When the world takes on this sheen, and scents wake up a little, the neighbourhood swifts go elsewhere or retire inside or maybe even rise above the weather. It’s much harder to track their comings and goings since they get pushed to the edge of days. And who wants to stand in the wet for thirty minutes waiting for a swift that may only be in view for a few seconds before it tucks itself away?
One thing I have seen more of this week, if it’s drizzling or wind is mustering toward the early stages of a storm, the birds will swing low over the garden. I’ll see a party at rooftop level (or lower) usually during two contrasting atmospheric conditions - in blue-sky heat and in mizzle. When it’s baking (a word I don’t often use for Sheffield) the creatures zip about, making that sound that a blade might make through a piece of paper. They become dynamic shapes and sentient beings. But when it’s spotting with rain the swifts slow down, they scribble through the air, dither, like they are carefully writing a letter out longhand. Because the light levels are lower, the swifts turn even darker - a fierce and soft blackness. It’s like they become birds of omen, you know like Vincent van Gogh’s crows scattering across a field.
If they’re slow enough, you can take in the way their wings paddle through air, the elastic band quality of their flexings, how this choreography is so their own you can make them out this close-up and also a mile off if you needed to. Yesterday I saw a swift’s forked tail in all its clarity, and then the bird was off. Somewhere else. The film had sped up again.
Yesterday was World Swift Day (June 7th): you can read about Swifts Without Frontiers’ project here. I celebrated the day walking up to Crookes high street for my usual Saturday morning shop. Around the business of people with and without dogs and buggies, and cars and buses and shops, I looked up. For the first time this summer I watched swifts skim between raindrops, crying and banking between the main drag and the park, on a cloud of fumes. What gifts we give to them.
Here are some of the notes I’ve posted over the last week from 2021, 2024 and 2025, with some added extras:
June 2nd 2024
Back off holiday. There always seems to be some movement around the end of May/beginning of June - as though they wait for us to go away before they sort themselves out. We unpack the car. I start looking at about 9pm for swifts. There’s one a few streets off - but few others (it’s quite a warm, clear evening) about. Then over the shoulder of the house two swifts together - cutting close by the nest. They play together above the street for a short while - then one enters the house at about 9:15. One swift. I wait to see if we have another swift - and yes, the partner flies in at about 9.20. Two swifts.
June 2nd 2025
Afternoon. A swift sings out of the bricks. Are there eggs?
Six birds with rubber bands for wings over our house this evening. One swift - just after nine - zigzags into the nest. That’s it - show’s over for the night.
June 3rd 2024
Two swifts above my head this morning. This evening the bat scooting up and down the back gardens.
June 3rd 2025
What feels like torrential rain to start the day. No sight of swifts. I mark for most the day so don’t get much time to look up. In the evening I step out at 9:10pm to a pale blue sky. Empty.
June 4th 2024
Just the sound of one (unseen) swift overhead.
June 4th 2025
A day at work so no time to watch the swifts. I walk down Bradley Street at about 9:50pm. The sky is a blotting paper blue; the street lamps little nests of light. The sky is clear of birds and song. Even the blackbirds are shtum.
June 5th 2024
I see swifts out the corner of my eye through the day. Very quiet otherwise. Where have they gone? In the evening, I watch three swifts chasing each other over the street in circles.
June 5th 2025
No swifts all day through the intermittent showers. This evening, as the online Zoom reading begins, a swift flies our way from out of nowhere - to eavesdrop on the fabulous words of poets.
June 6th 2021
I sit out and read some poetry (Robert Hass) and watch the swifts. There’s usually three swifts over the neighbourhood - Aldred Road, Bradley Street, but tonight I count one, two, three, four, five…five swifts. This peeks my interest. The weather has improved over the last ten days - warm weather came in just before the bank holiday weekend at the end of May. We have had sustained warm weather for nearly two weeks now - could this warm front have dragged in more swifts from elsewhere? I move to the front of the house. Two swifts fly in fast between our house and our neighbour’s - and this surprises me - at about 9:30pm - 9:40pm - two swifts do a practice run for our roof-space nest. I had given up on the notion that swifts might be nesting in our house this year (so stopped looking). And then I see it - glimpse it - nearly miss it - a swift enters our house, folding itself into the space like a handkerchief into a pocket.
June 6th 2025
I wake up at dawn and drops are rinsing the sky. At breakfast - drizzle - I go out to see swifts low and slow over the garden, one low enough I can see its forked tail. When I feel I can reach up to touch them like this they always seem like harbingers of rain.
June 7th 2021
World Swift Day. We sit out at the front of the house waiting for the swifts to come in to ‘land’. The sky darkens above us. At 9:45pm a swift swoops in under the eaves - coming in from across the street, slant, diagonally over the car.
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.
I’ve taken a photo this week from a card used in the board game Wingspan (a big favourite in our house). A name check for the illustrators here: Natalia Rojos, Maria Martinez Jaramillo and Beth Sobel - one of whom made this lovely image.