This week I went to the north of Scotland with William. He’s been selected to play in a ceilidh band that’s going to tour the Borders and Highlands. While he was practising with his fellow musicians in Cromarty, I decided to stay a few days and recoup, stand still (since the train journey takes eight hours or more) in Inverness. I thought the pages of my swift diary might be blank during my time in the city. But how wrong I was. I mentioned in a previous post how swifts favoured the east coast of Scotland - I just didn’t realise how far north they would travel.
The apartment I lodged in was on the corner of Hill Street. When I arrived, I immediately saw signs of that tell-tale movement - the kind of easy slide and banking swerve - you only get from swifts. I looked up as at least a dozen swifts flew over the junction between Hill Street and Reay Street. What a journey these swifts would have taken earlier in the year - from Sub-Sahara Africa to Northern Britain. What this encounter brought home to me is how much these birds are creatures of light. I waited for them to disappear from the sky at about 9:30pm to 10pm (the time I usually expect Sheffield swifts to roost) but they carried on looping round and round. Of course, I fathomed out, the further north I had travelled the longer light fills the bowl of sky. They were still out there in the gradual dusk at 10:30pm. I could hear them in their nests until about 11pm.
The closest nest to me was not far out of my reach from my second floor window. In the mornings, I watched them feed their chicks - how they squeezed, almost wriggled between the gutter and the worn sandstone bricks of the town houses. It underlined to me how adaptable they are - how they ‘work out’ spaces to inhabit. They chose our house because of one wedge of crumbling mortar in the Derbyshire stone under the gutter. It helps that we’ve got a false ceiling in the bathroom on which they can perch. In Inverness, on this street, the swifts looked for worn out grooves between the orange-flavoured sandstone bricks that they could occupy - and somehow squeezed under the gutter in the process. There were plenty of nests on Reay Street.
I woke in Inverness at 6am to see swifts cascading from high to low in sunshine. I came back on Wednesday evening to Sheffield to hear a swift chick (or chicks?) singing from the nest at 6pm.
Thursday morning felt like one of those days when everything had changed in Crookes. Often I have to go away, disappear for a while, for things to have moved on by the time I get back. In previous years, we’ve departed on holiday in August with swifts still threading the skies, only to return and find that they have all gone. What was different about Thursday morning? There were loads of swifts in the sky. They were busy with many things. When the swifts planed over our house I could make out differences in body size, the silhouettes against the sky - there were fledglings, mini-swifts, and there were the parents, palpably bigger. They all tumbled round together. It felt like a celebration.
In the evening I went out to check out the evening fireworks. It was a lot quieter. The sky was still silent at 9pm. At about 9:15pm a group of six swifts sloped back from wherever they had vanished to during the day. The parents were returning to empty nests. I would wager that chicks have left the confines of our walls. What must it be like to spend all your energies raising children only to find one day that they have disappeared? I’m sure I will find out. I stepped out onto the road to watch a swift swing down and hit the brickwork of our house at 9:30pm. I waited to see if the swift would be joined by its partner. Not long afterwards swift number two pirouetted out of the sky and slipped - much more sweetly than the Scottish swifts - into the nest. They sang to each other.
Before I went inside, high up I could hear them. The swifts without nests. The newbies. Discovering the sky.
Here are some of the notes I’ve posted over the last week taken from the 2025 diary, with some added video clips:
July 13th 2025
A day for a long journey with William. An early start. He says he’s seen a swift wing out from the nest - it’s 8:30am. The swifts are still busy feeding chicks.
I’m come to the far north of Scotland only to see swifts breaking over the River Ness this evening.
It’s 10:15pm and still light. Swifts in numbers are hurtling toward my second floor window and banking away, crying as they bend through dusk.
July 14th 2025
Even with the persistent drizzle over Inverness swifts are working the streets - screeching and swerving, dark shapes harrowing a dark sky.
July 15th 2025
The swifts on Reay Street are something else. I sit and watch them in the lounge mirror as I eat breakfast while they squeeze between the gutters and worn out sandstone bricks to feed their charges. Even now at 10:30pm they are spinning around the street. Because I am on the second floor I am almost within touching distance of the nearest nest: I watch a swift wriggle under the eaves and disappear for the night.
July 16th 2025
I’m up at 7am to see the swifts on Reay Street in Inverness skimming the rooftops, and there at 6pm in Crookes to hear chicks crying out from the nest.
July 17th 2025
A congregation of swifts fill the sky this morning. When groups swerve in low over the house I compare how some are larger than others. Parents and children. There’s swift guano, chalky lumps with black trails, on the wall underneath the cleft which always signals healthy chicks. Though whether there are nestlings still is a moot point. Every time I leave and enter the house, I glance up to listen.
July 18th 2025
Second time lucky:
July 19th 2025
The swifts know the storm is approaching. Well, they signal the proximity of rain since they hunt so low they’re almost brushing the tops of trees. They seem to move so fiercely, those dark wings under the thunder clouds.
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.