I thought this week’s post might have an elegiac feel to it, seeing as I hadn’t seen or heard a swift over our patch of ground for three days. But a swift returned in near darkness to the nest on Wednesday (a murky home-comer), and the last few nights three swifts - the Bradley Street pair and our lone swift - were running rings around the sky as if nothing had happened. It possibly hadn’t.
My premature forecast of leave-taking is a result in part of the birds orbiting at the edges of habitation. I wonder sometimes why they are still here now the chicks have fledged. The balance sheet must just be in favour of them hanging around for a little while longer. Days are still stacked with sunshine (the most consistently warm summer I can remember for a good while) and the food supply must be holding up. My hasty announcement of the swifts exiting for good in Tuesday’s diary entry is also partly down to me projecting onto the swifts a neat narrative of arrival, mating, rearing and then departure. The swifts don’t care about us and what we think. They have certain imperatives that are hard-wired into them, but after that they are unfathomable. It’s one of the reasons why I find them so absorbing.
Last week I said swifts live among us and above us at the same time. This week has underlined this fact to me, presented with an accompanying flourish of bold letters across the heavens. But as for me and my understanding of the birds, I still want to give them a little more room in my life than just free-wheeling creatures that are here for a while. When I return each year to tracking and mapping the comings and goings of swifts, I hope that they will be there for me in the hard times, when things get tough. But also, their presence - which seems eminently fragile, particularly in those wash-out years - acts as a kind of corrective too. When I wish for another thirty years on this earth, the company of swifts tells me this might not be a given, an entitlement I can ask for.
I usually do feel a sense of loss when the swifts depart. We’re often on holiday when this happens: we come back to an empty house. This year, because I have so intently watched the swifts - longer and more closely than any other year that I have written a diary about them - I feel more attuned to the moment and length of their disappearance already. It’s a bit like completing a jigsaw of a vista and standing back and seeing the whole picture for the first time - including that difficult part of fitting together an empty sky.
Here are the diary entries from notes I have posted this week:
August 3rd 2025
We drive over to Hathersage to the outdoor swimming pool. I stop after a length to ask the lifeguard if she’s seen any swifts today. No, not today. She wasn’t around yesterday. Last week she looked up and saw twenty or so swifts flocking in the sky together. She’s lived in three different houses in the village (she points toward different streets) and each one had a swifts’ nest. Yes, we agree, it’s been a good year for the swifts.
August 4th 2025
I’m in Newcastle recording a podcast with a poet. I ask the poet if they have swifts over Gosforth. No, there’s no swifts to be seen. I wonder how the swifts are faring in Inverness with Storm Floris.
August 5th 2025
The Crookes swifts have gone. ‘Our’ swifts have certainly left. We think they departed on Sunday. I’ve just waited a few days to check out the sky and see if we have any traffic. The silence is palpable.
August 6th 2025
If I listen close enough some mornings I can hear the traffic down in the valley, a constant, almost subconscious hum. Today I’m dialing into sky only to hear this extended soundtrack of urban life. Like the sea is a mile away, washing at the city’s gates.
August 7th 2025
The strangest thing. Having not seen or heard a bird for three days, last night I tuned into swifts over Bradley Street at 9pm. I walked the two minutes back to my house and waited to see if we had a visitor. Out of the semi-darkness I sensed this shape over my shoulder: it cut the air (I heard it as much as saw it) then slipped like a magician’s handkerchief into the pocket of the nest.
August 8th 2025
High skies and clouds in droves drifting across the prairie. I am looking out for swifts this morning, and I see one fleetingly above Slinn Street before it vanishes again. Perhaps looking hard enough is a trick for all occasions.
This evening we wait out after 9pm - and later than expected, after the bat has made a brief papery appearance, a swift enters the nest in almost-darkness.
August 9th 2025
The swee of an early morning bird. I walk up to Crookes high street. A month ago the swifts were pelting around this stretch of air, but today not one single bird along the main drag. Nothing.
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.
I'm with you Chris. I'm fortunate to have them in the skies here. My boxes are still empty after 6 years. One day.
This year they arrived in smaller numbers but when I thought they'd packed up two weeks ago, a nice group of 30+ circled above the town and I was fooled. It was the 5th (as last year) when a small gathering with martins and swallows surprised me and I've just spotted one.
Hooray for swifts. ✨️