Swift Diaries
Cold May Skies
This week I’ve been privy to one possible future-sound world where there are fewer and fewer swifts. Where they dwindle to the point that they no longer scream out the sky in blazing parties or knuckle under our roof space. I looked up on Friday evening at a flotilla of clouds dragging in from the north - thinking will I see a swift tonight? Just as this thought formed like a bubble above my head, one bird came into view: high up, silent, soon as here as gone. Many of the entries over the past seven days reckon with swift silences, absences - and as a corollary to this, cold May days and evenings. I’ve heard blackbirds, sparrows, thrushes, magpies in abundance but until today (Saturday) I’ve not heard much of the thin peal of swifts.
Last spring, there were a lot more swifts circling our patchwork of brick, grass and tarmac. Here’s an entry from last year’s diary that stands out because it so casually mentions a proliferation of birds:
Saturday 10th May 2025
Mid-morning and two birds touch and tangle, as though they are practicing tying knots together in mid-air. A little later, I catch a first fly-past, five or six swifts in red arrows formation low over the roof.
With the soft connection of those two creatures for that brief moment, I saw, for the first time, two swifts mating. But more than that, this commingling suggested the birds were ready to get on with the trajectory of their summer - to nest, brood, to feed their chicks.
This time around, it doesn’t feel like the swifts have hunkered down at all. Having said that, the 10th May 2026 also held a significant moment: in the space of one minute, the upper reaches of sky went from being empty to being occupied by fifteen or more swifts. It was literally a ‘high point’ of the week - they arrived and disappeared again, moving on to somewhere warmer. Somewhere with more food maybe. Somewhere without a hint of frost on the cars in the morning.
I’ve seen this slow start to a year before. 2021 was cold and wet. Here’s my entry from 11th May 2021:
A deluge. Mountain-range thunder. That full 360 degree effect, moving around us like tankers on a grey sea as we played football. Where do swifts go in storms? Above the clouds? Or do they just fold into their nests?
I gave up writing a diary that year for a time because I saw so few swifts cutting over our road and ‘sounding out’ the neighbourhood. I thought ‘our’ nesting swifts would never return.
With a quick glance at the weather app for next week, it looks like the sun is returning to Crookes and temperatures will topple over the 20 degree mark. Will this mean a larger number will ‘settle in’ or will it be a patchy year for the hillside swifts?
Here are the diary entries from notes I have posted this week:
10th May
The stillest and warmest part of the day at 7pm. Three swifts come into focus - high high up and - you feel, almost reachable, sharp against the blue.
An hour later, five, ten, fifteen birds - where did they all come from? The sky in spate, if only for a moment, before they all peel (and peal) away.
11th May
Blackbirds are chipping away at the block of evening. Bells in the valley. Tonight the high swifts are shaking their wings of sunlight.
12th May
I take my early evening 5K run, starting at the top of Crookes, onto Manchester Road down to Fulwood, through Broomhill, along Mushroom Lane, around Western Park then finishing by The Ponderosa, and I don’t hear or see a single swift.
13th May
The nearest I got to a swift today was in the poem I’m trying to write about the one singing through the brickwork.
14th May
On my way to football I’m hearing how much the sparrows are liking the leylandii, but above me, the curaçao-blue sky has been empty and silent all day.
15th May
Will I see a swift tonight? As if in answer, the sky produces one swift, black against the white clouds —and is here and gone in an instant.
16th May
I’m looking up and a neighbour asks me why, so I tell him about our nest, the swift bricks, and the birds’ absences this year. But because the air is warmer today, on my way up to the shops, I see three swifts over Crookes High Street – the first time this year. Coming back, I see three low over Bradley Street, then they’re clearing our road too (they may be the same group). I hear them swee over the garden.