The Year that the Swifts Didn't Come

It was the year that the Swifts didn't come.

As April passed into May, a heavy depression settled on Jeff. It didn't bode well.

Migrating Swifts had been in decline since the late '90s, but somehow he kept hoping, year after year, that there would be an upturn.

The problem wasn't limited to the Swifts either: the Spotted Flycatcher, Cuckoo and Nightingale were also in sharp decline, and Turtle Dove numbers had crashed by 98% since the 1960's - they were now on the black list.

The Swift, however, was Jeff's favourite.

It was the long-distance migrant that most associated with people, and as a keen bird-watcher, he had enjoyed its summer presence for as long as he could remember. Even as a boy, he remembered eagerly awaiting its return each year, elated to spot the first arrivals, and marvelling at the sight of their dark, scythe-winged silhouettes wheeling about in the blue skies of his youth.

Jeff grew up a town-dweller, the many old industrial buildings providing temporary summer accomodation for his favourite feathered friends. He would wake early to their screaming calls, and sit at his bedroom window watching their sweeping forays across the dawn sky, and their darting visits to their nests beneath the eaves of the garage opposite. He scrutinised those eaves through binoculars, not wanting to miss the day when their young would fledge and tentatively take to the sky via the guttering and the tall stems of mid-summer Buddleia.

By September they were gone; making their return journey to sub-Saharan Africa for the winter, and leaving a temporary hole in Jeff's young heart.

Since the millenium, the Swift had been moved from the green to amber on the list of conservation concern, and then to red in 2021.

Jeff had watched with increasing concern, researching the possible reasons for their declining numbers.

Many were cited: poor summer weather; a decline in their insect food, maybe due to changes in farming practices; continuing loss of suitable nesting sites, as the old buildings they prefer are renovated, or demolished, to accommodate our ever growing population; and pressures along migration routes, such as illegal hunting and habitat destruction at key stopover sites. 

The possible reasons were many, but the simple fact was that they were not coming, or at least not in the numbers they used to.

Jeff had tried to do his bit.

Now living more rurally, he had installed nesting bricks along the high wall of the garden and planted shrubs and flowers to encourage insects, their preferred source of food. He had asked his friends and family to do the same.

Yet this year, the swifts hadn't come, and he couldn't help thinking that it wasn't just the end of an era, it could be 'the beginning' of the end of the world.