Swifts - the screaming 'devil birds' of summer

They’ve made it again / Which means the globe’s still working, the Creation’s / Still waking refreshed, our summer’s / Still all to come. Ted Hughes

There’s something about Swifts that brings to mind American 50s B-movies. Motorcycle gangs, all chrome, leather and attitude, terrorising small town America. Our own Wild Ones scream into town each May and turn heads skywards for the next few months. They've had a non-stop, long-haul flight from Africa; not that this trip bothered them. Swifts are all about flying.

They may not look like much (they’re basically two wings and a mouth) but it’s hard to explain their abilities without making them sound supernatural. They feed in the air, they bathe in the rainclouds and, yes madam, they even do that while they’re up there too.

At night they switch off half their brain, switch on cruise control and fall asleep amongst the stars. If they had their way they would never come down. But there’s one little flaw in their plan: eggs don’t float. So, for just a few weeks of the year, they begrudgingly swap the open skies for a cramped nest under the eaves where they raise their young.

On warm, summer evenings they slip out to join other Swifts to form ‘screaming parties’ – gangs acrobatically blazing across the Sussex skyline. Other birds fly out of necessity, but Swifts seem to fly for the hell of it, screaming with delight at the top of their little Swift lungs, a shrill cry that is forever associated with English summers and earned them the name ‘Devil Birds’.