1 …  The Swift

We all need something to anchor us to a reality of our choosing; to fall back on when trouble hits and to pour our passions into when life leaves a burnt out husk or a hollow shell.  Family is distant and mostly turned away; religion never did it for me, and train spotting?  Oh come on; fuck no!  Let's be serious.  It's always been birds for me.

On my left hand I have a tattoo of a swift. It's inked on the fleshy part between my thumb and pointer and flies high whenever I move either digit.  It's really a stick-and-poke, a self given tat with a large sewing needle and blue-black India ink. Jac had to finish it off for me, and must have cut pretty deep as it's still as vibrant as ever and flies high wherever I go.  Why a swift?   Well … conveniently they are easy to draw, with long scythe wings cutting through the sky and a narrow barrel body packed full of muscle and determination and grit.  A couple of lines and you have the ultimate flying spirit; fill it in with ink  and you have given life to shrieking devil.

As a young kid, I'm lying on my back in a field of tall grasses and buttercups and yellow dandelions, South London, close to the North Downs.  Seamus is barking and bounding around trying to find me. It's itchy and grass stems tickle my nose and grass seeds are in my undies.  I can see The Lane with the iron bar blocking vehicle traffic, the one I would swing on; hanging there on my tummy rocking back and forth, no hands … and fell off that one time busting my nose.  I'm hearing the bees and grasshoppers, the dogs and kids … fading in and out … and looking up, high into the summer sky and the bulging, ginormous cumulus clouds. Looking way up.  Lost.  Half dreaming. There they are, always so high in that June sky that you can hardly really see them.  Just dark silhouettes.  A hidden and secret sight that few will share.  They are dancing, shape shifting, flickering, and at times dropping so fast that clouds are parted and streams of bright light are left, just for a moment though that I have to convince myself that it is real. I feel that we have a personal connection together; just me and the swifts, bonded together in this secret.  I see you matie.  I'm drifting up to join you in my seven year old daydreams.

And if you like birds then you're also fascinated by flight and the freedom it bestows, and there can be no family that defines powered flight like the swifts.  Sure, I have followed Griffons high in the Himalayas as they glide below me, my days trek demolished with ease in just a few effortless minutes.  How can you not be enthralled as each pointed primary feather responds independently to the air currents, the alula raised and tail spread to suddenly rise on a swirling thermal. What a view, what a freaking life it must be looking down on the greatest wall of mountains in the world that's stretching from horizon to horizon and beyond.  Afghanistan to the left, Myanmar to the right and Kashmir right below.  And how can you not cry when you are in the midst of a swirling mass of Sooty Shearwaters far out on the ocean.  Tens of thousands of birds tilting back and forth, towering up above a swell to be lost behind the next almost as quickly.  Below, bait fish moving with the sea currents and tens of humpback whales blow and surface amongst the swirling bird life above.  There's birds and fish and foam and bills and wings and eyes, all chaotically dancing … doing their own thing away from the constraints of land.  No straight lines here, except their steep angular wings slicing the waves and cutting the foam.  And how the hell can you not give a shout, a cheer, a bon voyage to the flocks of Sandpipers and Plovers and Dunlin flying down the beach.  Flying into the misty salt spray and skimming the waves.  I have become lost, diving deep and tumbling down into their huge liquid eyes and dreaming of the far north and colorful tundra, now a memory as they head south, south, way south. Their summer home is now blazing reds and yellows of autumn.  Time to leave.  Time to make footprints amongst the shells and crabs along the Pacific.  Restless, action, moving … keep moving.  No turning back.

But it's only the swifts that fly eternally, occasionally touching a firm surface to lay eggs and raise a family … and then it's just the most precarious of land, hidden from view inside the dark shell of a tree or behind a waterfall amongst damp, dripping moss and slippery rocks.  With tiny, weak legs and clothed in subtle sooty blacks and browns, and encased by long wings of steel, they don't really belong grounded at all.  Certainly they are not anchored to land.  Their true home is the unrestrained sky.  For it is here they sleep on the wing, flying in lazy high circles; they have sex whilst in this dream land, the couple flying as a single shadow, maybe resting their heads together, side by side, on pillows of blue clouds, sharing intimate stories and endless horizons; they gorge on aerial insects and winged ants, following the air currents as they endlessly shift back and forth tracing an unknown alphabet; they scream together like mythical sirens as they hurtle down, chasing friends and foes alike in the throws of adrenaline.  It's a roller coaster, a lightning bolt, a sonic boom defying gravity and seemingly the laws of physics.  Fuck.  Full horns blaring.  Full throttle.  Live free or die.  Battle born.  No quarter.  Give no quarter; take no shit.  It's that middle finger riding high and knocking you flat.  Get up.  Get up and take it all in.

Mine’s a Vaux's.  I was living in Oregon at the time and it seemed like the perfect choice.  I'm in the camp that pronounces it the harsh way; rhyming it with "foxes'', but with a more drawn out ‘a’ as if I could muster a Boston accent; I've heard others that align with a different camp,  and champion the rhyme of  "there she blows", more Parisian than East Coast.  Two camps; the same bird … I've shifted my alliances over time but have no real affiliation either way.  I've lived in so many time zones that my accent and words are eclectic, poi, dizzy, mixed many times over and back again.  Plo-ver or Plu-ver.  Las-YOU-li or laz-you-lie. Tor-mar-toe or Toe-may-toe.  Just temporary camps we rest in for a while.  Does it really matter?  It's just football teams; just political parties.  A sense of geography or class.  In the big scheme of things it's just words-words, talk-talk.  Let's actually do something worthwhile instead.  Come on.  Get off that couch and go birding!

Wings flickering back and forth in a blur, the high pitched and rapid chit-shitty-chit calls, kinda quiet like excited static electricity crackling at night.  Flying above a recently burnt forest in the Cascades; a smoke cloud parting and rejoining to swirl down a chimney as the sun sets in downtown Bend; a thermaling and tumbling group chasing a ridge line along a migration route … Winter Ridge with the desert and the oval azure Summer Lake below. Salt, sand and feathers all in a whirlwind.  Wooosh!  You can hear the sound of the wind they make as they hurtle past.  Fun memories, fun friends to share them with, and fun birds … Well that's birding at its best isn't it?

There's a lot of swifts out there; more than a hundred species throughout the world … tiny Swiftlets, elegant and long tailed Tree Swifts, pastel colored Palm Swifts, Needletails and Spinetails … all highly strung and as fast as a streak of lightning.  Many are restricted to inhabiting isolated islands, or particular mountain peaks.  Little is known about most of them.  They remain an enigma. Damn, they can be almost impossible to identify as they dart past; but it's sure fun staring at the limits of your bins trying to freeze an image long enough to hold on to.  Flying between the buildings of downtown Kuala Lumpur; above the misty sulfurous fumes of an active Indonesian volcano; a successful twitch to a west London reservoir to secure a spring vagrant; thousands arriving en masse in southern Israel having just crossed the expanses of the Sahara Desert; dancing over limestone islands surrounded by coral reef blue.  Oh damn,  I love that blue.  It's the turquoise of Morocco, but it moves and changes as the shadows, the swifts, cut through, slashing back and forth like a diamond.  So many memories and experiences.  The swifts are my springboard back to adventures and travels that I somehow survived and onto planning trips yet to come.

But my tattoo symbolizes more than just memories and a lifelong love affair with birds. It's that independence and free spirit that can only keep going. Always returning back from thunderstorms and long journeys. Swifts hide their true identity with speed and distance. It's sticking that fuck-you middle finger up to the world saying no quarter.  It's the self-reliance and power without most of the world even noticing.  Who cares, we’ll do it anyway!  And then there's the pure energy of anarchy when the swifts tumble out of the sky shrieking and screaming like a tornado.  It's primeval.  It's pure energy.  It's the smashing of glass, the sting of tear gas, the roar of 80's punk and Stop The City all over again.  We're jumping around to The Exploited, and GBH and The Damned.  Na-Na, Na-Na.  Police coming.  Here's the Alsatians, the water cannons, the old bill.  It's the raw energy; it's the freedom of youth.  No fear, just go for it and trust in yourself. Live, Live damnit.  Live now.  Not a second to feel old.  Come on; COME ON.  How can you keep up?  Not many can