Screaming from the rooftops
The Field|June 2021
A sky filled with shrieking, swooping swifts is one of the true delights of summer. But it is one we need to work hard to protect
DAVID TOMLINSON
Screaming from the rooftops

NO bird symbolises high summer more than the swift: the flocks that race like hooligans through our towns and villages on July evenings, screaming ecstatically, capture the very essence of the season. Once known as devil birds, swifts have always been creatures of mystery, appearing suddenly in early May and departing equally abruptly in August. Nobody knew where they came from nor where they went to. The naturalist Gilbert White thought that they hibernated, but Edward Jenner (1749-1823), the man who invented vaccination, was the first to suggest that they migrated.

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