May Day dawns chilly and breezy, with sullen gray clouds promising rain. Hope appears very far-off. However then, a distant darkish streak scythes by means of the skies over the Avalon Marshes, stiff-winged, direct and decided. A single swift, my first of the yr.
As I do each spring, I silently recite the phrases of the poet Ted Hughes: “They’ve made it once more, which implies the globe’s nonetheless working … ”
I’ve at all times cherished swifts. They seem invincible, easy masters of the air, exchanging Africa for Europe and again once more. In the course of the first half of my life, once I lived in London, they have been a reassuring signal of the altering of the seasons. However now their world is underneath menace. Since my childhood they’ve been in regular decline, a destiny shared with so lots of our once-familiar migrant birds.
Happily, swifts have their human champions, none extra distinguished than the character author Hannah Bourne-Taylor. She tirelessly campaigns for a change within the legislation to put in “swift bricks” in each new-build, so the birds have someplace to nest. She and lots of others are combating on many fronts, hoping they’ll flip round these birds’ fortunes earlier than the globe actually does cease working.
In a while within the day, the climate improves and we’re handled to hordes of swifts hawking low for invisible bugs, whereas emitting that haunting, high-pitched scream that earned them the title “satan birds”. Subsequent morning the rain returns, and they’re nowhere to be seen.
