Crossing a field empty of animals once, I came upon a small, dark bird lying in the grass. I could see it was alive, moving its head slightly with beady watchful eyes.
As I bent to pick it up I thought it was a swallow which, for some reason, had come a cropper while chasing insects in a landscape where life can be extinguished by a sharp-eyed predator.
The little bird was warm and quiet in my hand, its pristine livery unruffled by whatever had happened to cast it to the ground.
I turned it over and saw miniscule legs and claws, smaller than I had ever seen on any bird. It could not stand up when I placed it back on the grass.
I lifted it again and cast it into the air hoping for a take-off. Away it sped, zigzagging over the field, a thrilling outcome I have never forgotten.
This small bird was a swift (Apus apus), migratory birds that this month are returning from central and southern Africa, travelling about 800km a day over jungle, Sahara, Atlas Mountains, Mediterranean and Iberian Peninsula and finally over Biscay to make Irish landfall — sucking insects into wide, gaping beaks.
Swifts are birds of urban skies here, nesting in old, high buildings, warehouses, convents and church towers, returning to old sites to breed two or three chicks in nests made from scraps picked up in flight and bonded with saliva.
I have been fortunate to have watched swifts in frantic groups over ancient cities such as Tarragona, the old Roman capital of Espania, on the Costa Daurada, whirling overhead and zooming down old streets playing games of chance, screaming in the dusk. Missile-like devil birds, as they are sometimes described, mate and sleep while gliding through updrafts on long, pointed wings, with four toes on each feathered foot to cling under a nesting crevice.
The elegant swift is the epitome of speed in flight, with differing wing actions from swallows and martins — short, rapid beats followed by long, slow glides with forked tail, stiffened wings scythe-shaped to a cigar body making an anchor silhouette.
These ‘town birds’ occasionally flee inland from bad weather, nestlings surviving by going into a trance but parents returning to concentrate on 24-hour feeding to get the young on the wing fast. From early August they set out on the long journey to Africa, all 20,000 pairs of them, though they are difficult to census, as one expert put it.
The main issue for the birds is the removal of old buildings, but in recent years enthusiastic birders have begun to erect special nest-boxes to attract them.
This is neither cheap nor stress-free as purpose-built boxes such as Schweglers must be provided (€50 each, approximately) as well as CDs of bird calls to be played at dawn and dusk.
In recent years some commercial interests have chipped in to help and last week there was a news story about one individual who was erecting a number of boxes on his property.
The remarkable bird has also inspired poets. Edward Thomas wrote of swifts “shrieking with fierce glee… as if the bow has flown off with the arrow”. And John Heath-Stubbs felt there was “no creature so wholly native to the upper air”.
He likened the birds to angels rather than devils.
(Source – Irish Independent – Environment – Joe Kennedy – 08/05/2022)