The Millennium Gallery was full of swifts. Huge creatures caught in twisting flight. I walked under and around the installation for ten minutes: sheer exuberance. The models captured in essence what I often feel about these birds - an overwhelming sense of kinetic freedom and, yes, joy. This is not a straightforward thing to achieve in a gallery space, models hemmed in by artificial light and a pristine white roof. It was their outlandish size that made them so palpably swiftian. By magnifying them, patterning them with different colours, by ‘curving’ them, the forms felt more like these sleek, strange creatures I track scooting in arrow formation over the roof of our house.
The story of how this flock (the whole show is entitled ‘A Scream of Swifts’) came to fruition can be found in detail here. Patrick Amber and Jo Veal, the artists who found a way of making movement from ‘fixed’, hanging sculptures, captured something of swiftishness not only in the way they depicted the creatures but in the way they were created too. The swifts evolved out of a community arts project. Many hands made the birds. Swifts - the most social of birds - these swifts, were given life through cooperative practice.
One of the pleasing things about this project was how its showing in the main thoroughfare of the gallery was extended because it was so popular. People loved being among swifts in a time when they weren’t physically around (the exhibition ran all the way through November 2024 to the end of February 2025). It made me think again about the general attraction of swifts in the public arena. Just look at the energy and effort put into promoting swift boxes, swift bricks to counteract the acts that increasingly make it harder for swifts to live among us, for instance.
I have a whole bag of reasons why I’m drawn to these birds. I know some of these grounds are more consciously defined than others. Without obviously stating the obvious (the nest thing), one of the main rationales for spending time in the company of swifts is that they live among us and above us at the same time. That they are never seen perching on the fence at the bottom of the garden gives them this generative appeal.
That they are here for three months - if we’re lucky and it’s been a sunny, insect-heavy year - must also be another reason why I stay with these birds. Now, on the cusp of July and August it feels like the swifts are pushing themselves increasingly to the edges of days. I get up in the morning and maybe see a swift or two. At about 9pm I wait to see if swifts return: they still do, but not in the numbers I saw in June and early July. I’ve probably exaggerated the end-of-season feel in my diary entries, but the skies are increasingly silent through the day. I think I’ve noticed this ‘dwindling’ presence more this year since my focus has stayed pretty constant. The three swifts (occasionally there are a couple more of them ) that dominate the night sky - that stand out because there are so few of them - have decided to stay because it’s in their best interests to feed here before they move on. Whether or not I’ll still be writing about swifts circling over our road, and the single swift that threads the eye of the needle to enter our house in next week’s post is still in the balance.
Here are the diary entries from notes I have posted this week:
July 27th 2025
I walk up to the old jail in Jedburgh, then to the remarkable ruins of the Augustinian Abbey. Wordsworth came here in 1803 and met Walter Scott (a blue plaque tells me so). It’s early evening so I’m on the lookout for returning swifts. Over the town, two swifts - as if on cue - float over the police station then bank toward the large town houses spread across the hills.
July 28th 2025
This morning the Jedburgh swifts are singing above us somewhere. This evening I watch a bat turn about our street and think it is too late for swifts to turn up now. Then one bird, and another one, fly into the nest — which is doubly surprising to me.
July 29th 2025
Wetting summer rain at 9pm. They’re usually low under the weight of a shower but tonight they glide high - and for this brief time - there’s loads of them, convening together under the dark clouds.
July 30th 2025
The swifts were here this morning, sugaring the tips of their wings with sunlight. This evening the sky is ominously quiet until just after 9pm when a few swifts scroll across the sky from southeast to northwest. A swift, without much ceremony (and by that I mean circling around) enters the crack in the brickwork at 9:10pm.
July 31st 2025
The sky is draining like a summer reservoir. Late on, three swifts return to scream and chase each other. Usually two will fly toward the front-side of the house then bank away, but tonight a swift deviates from this line and posts itself like a letter through the hole under the gutter.
August 1st 2025
Have the swifts made it into August? Just before 9pm, three birds provide the sky with a little focus, slowly weaving backwards and forwards (or from side to side) like they were sweeping up after a party.
August 2nd 2025
Summer, this morning, has been reduced to a single swift arcing to and fro two streets away - skimming just above the rooftops.
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 (Patrick Amber and community group) for the artwork on this post.