Counting swifts at dusk
For a few weeks every spring and autumn, Vaux's swifts use an old brick chimney near the library as a roost on their migration. Around sunset they gather overhead in a loose, chattering cloud, then start to spiral, and then pour into the chimney like water going down a drain.
I joined the volunteer count this year. The method is simpler than I expected: you count in blocks of ten as they drop in, with a clicker, and two people count independently so the numbers can be checked against each other.
Tonight
The first birds arrived at 19:20. By 19:45 the vortex had formed, a slow clockwise funnel maybe forty metres across. Entry started at 19:52 and was over by 20:06. My count: 1,380. My partner's: 1,440. We logged 1,400.
A Cooper's hawk made two passes through the funnel and came away with nothing both times. Every time it appeared, the whole cloud lifted and scattered, and the entry stopped for a minute or two before it started again.
Why it gets to me
It's the speed of the final drop. Hundreds of birds folding their wings and falling into a hole the width of a doorway, without collisions, in the dark. A crowd of people on the pavement with folding chairs, cheering a chimney.
The count runs again in September. If you're nearby, just show up twenty minutes before sunset and look up.