The Swift - a good omen

Drawing of a Swift in colour pencil by me, needs a bit of cleaning up.

A bird flew into my flat the other evening. I’d been out having dinner with my friend Steve. It was Midsummer and we were celebrating. I left the windows open.

We arrive back at my flat at about 11.30 pm, walk up the stairs, and find a black, feathery creature lying like a crumpled black bag on the middle landing. At first I think it is dead, then notice that it has started moving slightly.

My cat is nowhere to be seen. Steve finds a cardboard box. The bird struggles as we try to get it in, scampering to a corner and trying to climb the wall, but it doesn't fly.

After a bit, Steve manages to get it in the container. Once in the box, the bird soon settles. We both whisper reassuring sounds and, surprisingly, it does calm down. 

There is no lid on the box, so it could escape easily, but it simply clutches the edge, looking around, its little dark grey head poking out. We take it down the stairs and out of the front door. I assume the poor creature might have broken a wing, so maybe can’t fly. Perhaps the cat has damaged it.

We're just down the front steps and onto the pavement, when the bird has a look around and suddenly takes off into the night sky, so quick!

I knew it was a swift because I’ve seen lots of them outside my bedroom window this summer. My bedroom is four floors up and the window looks out onto the branches of a large tree. The birds zoom around this tree and into my roof, where they've been building their nests in the eaves. It’s an old Victorian, or possibly Georgian house, so it has ample space for the birds to roost. 

The swifts go so fast they look like they’re flying straight into my window and I think they’re going to crash, but then they turn just in time and zoom up into the roof. Incidentally, they seem to be sharing this space quite peacefully with the sparrows. 

The swifts fly around in the morning, shrieking demonically. Indeed, they were once known as the 'devil bird' for this very reason. I watch them soaring across the sky. They’re very beautiful birds, with such amazing flying design.

Swifts have been around since the dinosaurs. They would have once nested in treetops, but, since humans have been about they’ve developed a preference for the cracks and crevices under rooftops. They come to southern England and Wales every April and return to southern Africa in August. According to the RSPB they migrate 3,400 miles twice a year, further than going to the moon.

However, it would seem that they don’t find this flying to be hard work at all, as they sleep, eat, bathe and even mate on the wing. After leaving the nest it will be two or three years before they touch land again. Swifts can fly at a speed of 69 mph, eat flying insects and fly low over the surface of lakes and ponds scooping up tiny creatures and water.

Unfortunately, because people are now having loft extensions and sealing up their roofs, combined with the shortage of insects, swifts are a rare species nowadays. I’m very proud to have some nesting above my bedroom window.

Steve tells me that helping a bird is a good omen.

The cat has been hiding under the bed all this time. I think she was frightened.