The Swift

Yesterday, as I sat talking to my mother in her kitchen, the evening outside growing ever darker as the last of the sun dipped away, the back door popped open with a start. There, through the doorway, came my stepfather, clumsily elbowing the door open as he held his hands clasped tight. He kicked the door shut behind him with his heel, raised his hands still locked together, and nodded toward them as though to bring them to our heed.

“What do you think I’ve found?”, he said with a schoolboy glee.

My mother stepped forward to see, and as he opened his hands a little she let out a shriek and ran into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. At once she shouted back through the door, “Why did you bring that in here? You know I don’t like them. Get it out!”

The door may have dampened her speech, but the pitch of true fright I knew full well. It could only mean one thing: a bird. I learnt over many years that my mother hated nothing more than those feathery devils. She could stand them at some farness, or better were they dead, but any living bird she could not bear to come near. Even as a child I would be sent ahead to scatter flocks of doves or sparrows gathered in our way, and should a bird threaten her by so much as a flap of its wings too near, she would leap back and shriek. There are many things I mislike, but none with such strength and earnestness as my mother shows toward birds.

“Show me it,” I said with some knowledge of what I was about to see. And as I stepped toward my stepfather he slowly split his hands to show me his find.

A small, deep brown bird lay nestled in his hands with its head held softly between his thumb and forefinger, lest it seek to fly away. I first heeded its short sharp bill, the opening of which was wide, but soon came to almost no more than a prick, and which seemed far smaller than any other bird I had seen up near. But at once it tilted its head askew to look at me, and I saw its tiny black–bead eye, which almost as quick it hid beneath an eyelid to keep it from the bright lights above. I could not think what kind of bird it was, as though its feathers were the deep brown of a she ouzel, it was only as great as a sparrow. And that oddly sharp bill!

“It’s a swift,” my stepfather said, reading my thoughts, “I found it on the ground under the eaves.”

A swift. No wonder I didn’t know it. Were it flying then I might soon know its shape cast against the sun or bright sky, so long as I could tell it from a swallow, that is. You don’t see swifts up near, for they never come down to the ground. They live aloft, eating and sleeping on the wing, and even when they land it is only to a nest on the height of a house or cliff. Their whole lives are spent up above us, and to see one up near means something has gone wrong.

“I worried that the cats might get it,” my stepfather went on, “they can’t take off from the ground, so once they’ve fallen they’re helpless.”

The body of a swift has grown and shifted to fit a given nook so well that now it cannot live outside of it. The Greeks called them apous, which mean ‘footless’, and looking at its thin legs it’s soft to understand why. The legs are fit to cling onto the cliffside as it feeds its nestlings, and do well enough on the bricks of a house. But what they have in clinging strength they lack in strength to stand. A swift cannot hold up the weight of its own body, and instead lie helplessly on the ground should they fall. Neither can they take flight again without the might to leap or run as other birds. They can only bide until they starve or are eaten by some lucky cat.

“Are we going to help it get aloft again?” I said, getting to my stepfather’s words before he could.

“Aye. Let’s go into the yard.”

I had read about how to help swifts before, but had never seen it done. For that they cannot fly away themselves from the ground, you have to give them some help. By rights they would loosen their grip from whatever height they clung, and take the drop as an opening to flap and drive themselves upward and onward. So to get them aloft once more we have to give them that opening, a few seconds so that they can spread their wings and flap. And the only way to do that is to throw them!

We went into my mother’s yard, but a tree at the bottom and hedges either side stopped us from throwing the bird there. Instead we walked into the street, and my stepfather stood bearing along the gap between the houses and the trees. He opened his hands once more, and softly pulled its claws from about his finger. Then, with a swing back, he heaved the bird forward and upward with an underarm throw.

The upbound swift peaked only a few meters aloft, and began to fall again. I thought that had not worked, and that we had only doomed the bird to some broken bones. But, at once, it began to flap. Its fall slowed, then stopped, and then drove upward ever so slightly. It seemed to work hard as it went, but kept on, bit by bit winning the fight to keep aloft. At length it found a smooth stroke, and then, at once, it darted upward and beyond the trees and out of sight.