Swiftly does it

The one bird you might never see at rest, swifts feed, drink and socialise on the wing, flying thousands of miles and almost never touching down. Yet the future of these near-perfect birds is up in the air

- Mark Cocker

THE other day, I had what I’m tempted to call a commonplace encounter with common swifts. In truth, most people attached to the most aerial of our summer migrants know that there is seldom anything ordinary about such an extraordinary creature. Five birds, possibly parents with chicks to feed, were assaulting the insects wafting up from a Derbyshire hillside of tall grasses and flowers. They scythed down over the slopes, the blade-like wings held dead level, as they exploited both the effects of gravity and the fresh breeze to spire and jink after unseen prey. Occasionally, one made a flight-line that cut slantwise across the current, so I could hear a swush-ing noise from the flight feathers, like the sound of air on an arrow fletch. For a split second, another let the wind take it sideways, as if it were momentarily losing control, the wings paddling hard, until finally it reasserted absolute mastery and planed out calmly into the blue. For a bird of so many superlatives, that brief sense of frailty seemed somehow telling. Common swifts are surely as close to perfection as a bird in flight will ever be.