"Also known as ‘devil birds’ for their haunting scream, they are just starting to arrive from sub-Saharan Africa".
"May Day dawns cold and breezy, with sullen grey clouds promising rain. Hope seems very far away. But then, a distant dark streak scythes through the skies over the Avalon Marshes, stiff-winged, direct and determined. A single swift, my first of the year.
As I do every spring, I silently recite the words of the poet Ted Hughes: “They’ve made it again, which means the globe’s still working … ”
I’ve always loved swifts. They appear invincible, effortless masters of the air, exchanging Africa for Europe and back again. During the first half of my life, when I lived in London, they were a reassuring sign of the changing of the seasons. But now their world is under threat. Since my childhood they’ve been in steady decline, a fate shared with so many of our once-familiar migrant birds.
Fortunately, swifts have their human champions, none more prominent than the nature writer Hannah Bourne-Taylor. She tirelessly campaigns for a change in the law to install “swift bricks” in every new-build, so the birds have somewhere to nest. She and many others are fighting on many fronts, hoping they can turn around these birds’ fortunes before the globe really does stop working."
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