"They're back!"...

I’m in Fakenham and the swifts have arrived. Richard Mabey, one of my favourite authors on the natural world, watches the skies and waits, too, for the first returnees. This is from his book, A Brush with Nature...

“Spring is incomplete for me – no, it does not even begin – until the swifts are back. I spend the last days of April and first few of May in a fever of anxiety, wondering if the most thrilling birds in Britain… will make it again this year. Evening means binocular peerings over the spires of the town, or dashes down to Sunnyside where our local birds have their biggest colonies, for a glimpse of those careering scimitar wings. If they’re late, which they increasingly are, it’s on to the websites for those with Swift Obsessive Disorder, and hopes for messages like that posted from Spain last May: ''For those lacking common swifts in northern Europe, this afternoon was evidence of a huge arrival over Torremolinos.” Sure enough, two days later they brought the Costa del Sol to our shores. Enough for emails to begin flashing between swift addicts: “They’re back.”

A quiet corner of Bungay...