Out with Monty, gazing into an evening sky empty but for a sliver of moon. And then that sound - there's nothing else like it – and I looked for the swifts, and here they came. But something was wrong. Instead of the scything, here was something else altogether. Fluttering, I suppose you'd call it. Almost batlike. A helpless flapping at the aether.
These were shit swifts.
And then it struck me. This was a brood, on their first flight. They were learning how to be swifts.
‘Fuck!’ they were saying, ‘I can't do this. I'm fucking going to die!’
And then their frantic flapping would catch on the lip of the air, and they'd hold there for a second. And then another helpless fall, and another frantic recovery. And there was a joy to all that, as well as the terror. You don't just arrive in the world as a swift: you have to work at it. You have to get up to pace. Acquiring that unbirdlike, inorganic ruthless perfection. That ability to be not a bird, but a blade, cutting the world's throat.
But for now here they were, fledglings, learning to fly by falling.
Stunning visuals lighting up my hot drudgery day. Just got a swift box put on my elderly mum’s house, felt they deserved a place to briefly lay an egg or two after three years of flying to Africa and back without landing, ever. These new fledglings will be doing, this never returning to the crack in the eaves or the box, no more help from mum n dad, its breathtaking and you saw their start!