Swift Diaries

Chasing the sun

It’s got to a moment now when I look up and think this might be one of the last times I see swifts circling over the house. I was going to write: ‘It’s got to a point now…’ but ‘point’ seems too definite, circumscribed. When actually do swifts leave for good? Last year, Ted our cat died on August 1st. Partly to deal with the grief of losing a loved family member, we went away for the weekend to Northumbria. When we returned on Monday August 5th the swifts that ruled our neighbourhood had disappeared. And yet, and yet…I read the final entries of my diary for 2024, and this is what I have to say in retrospect on the 12th August: ‘I hear swifts above the house on a warm but cloudy day (I don’t catch them in flight). Yesterday, the 11th - we hear swifts when we are in the back garden with pizza. We look up and high above the house - four swifts come together, sing, then split apart again.’

Swifts must have routes they take as they fly both north and south. There must swift superhighways, preferred (feeding) lines that they seek. The Inverness swifts that I saw last week must have an airy path they take back to sub-Sahara Africa, that they follow, that they pass on to each other from year to year. How many swifts do I see in August that are just passing through?

Even as I write about swifts relocating, leaving, they are crying outside my bedroom window. There must be half a dozen of them wheeling over Slinn Street (two streets away). Earlier this week there seemed to be fewer birds around. They didn’t seem to be as rowdy as they had been at the beginning of July. I wonder how many of the fledglings are still here - and how many of them are adults (parents) I am tracking through the sky. The swifts’ movements seem much more leisurely now since they are no longer looking to feed their chicks - but I am probably projecting this onto them. They are still busily hunting down insects to bulk up, I guess, before the journey to another continent, another hemisphere.

If the weather holds, if the sun wins out, the Crookes swifts might be here for another week or two. I keep checking whether a swift is still dwelling in our house - we have reverted back to one swift inhabiting our roof-space - and yes, it falls out of the sky each night at about 9:30pm. It’s geographical ‘tracker’ must be kicking in though - beginning to pull it toward somewhere else, south, to chase the sun.

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Here are the diary entries from notes I have sent out this week:

July 20th 2025

With the rain and rounds of thunder I haven’t set eyes on a swift all day. A no-show for the first time in weeks.

July 21st 2025

The days of rain have sucked the life out of swift parties. This evening feels like an end of season show, with the odd swift circling mid-sky, in silence, over the nesting grounds. Or like the beginning of May all over again - when I looked skywards to spot one or two swifts, those flickering auguries of the summer to come.

July 22nd 2025

I step out just after 9pm to see three swifts have returned, looking small in the whole of the sky.

Later, after 9:30pm, one swifts finds the nest with a ‘plop’. I wait to see if its partner returns, but there’s no second descent out of the darkness.

July 23rd 2025

The screams of swifts patchily heard throughout the day, but it takes until 9pm for three of them (it’s always three now) to flutter like flags over the rooftops. One of the final parades?

July 24th 2025

The swifts have found their voices again. There were four this morning channeling between our house and our neighbour’s. This evening about ten swifts got together to scream and circle over our garden and beyond. Some centrifugal force brings them together and then they fly away to all parts.

July 25th 2025

I wake at 6am and go out but nothing doing. A switch seems to be flicked at about 6:30am and swifts occupy the sky. There aren’t that many of them, eight at the most, but they make sure to fill the air with screams and swerves.

July 26th 2025

They are definitely still here. This morning they screech and circle over Bradley Street like a child’s mobile blown by the wind.

For most of the day I travel north to the Scottish borders. Jedburgh has swifts - I can hear them over the town centre. Heiton - a village not far from Kelso - has plenty of swifts, still spinning round the houses and gardens at 10pm. I have travelled from Swift-land to Swift-land.

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Thanks for reading this post. If you want to read my poetry, 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 have a website that has fair representation of my work, including the River Don sequence of poems, 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.

Thanks to Jo Veal for the artwork on this post. There will be more on Jo and her swift art in a later correspondence.