Swifts etc

Well, another beautiful day today, if a bit on the warm side for those who, like me, were at work.  At least I was working outside most of the time.  The rain yesterday has greened up the grass, but the ground in many places will have been too hard to absorb much of it, I suppose.  Lots of annoying flies around today, several of which took the opportunity to bite me.

The garden birds have been mostly silent for a while now.  They no longer need to sing to defend territories (for the most part;  there are exceptions), and are in any case much too busy.  One sound that seems to have disappeared completely from the skies around where we are is the scream of swifts.  They've gone - though there were still parties of swifts screaming over Caersws when I was there last Friday, so they've not yet gone from everywhere.  Swifts are among the earliest of summer migrants to depart, and in fact if the summer is a good one they will often leave sooner - since, once they've raised their young, they're on their way.

They are so completely a summer bird, so far as we're concerned, that the sound of swifts for me is the strongest and most moving symbol of this season.  And when they're no longer here, even if the calendar still assures me it's high summer, for me there is a breath of autumn already in the air.

A harsh and querulous croak disturbed my reverie as I was reflecting on the absence of swifts from today's blue skies, and I looked round in time to see a pair of herons lurching away.  Herons aren't bad fliers in fact, but they always look as though any moment they'll just fall out of the sky.  We've seen a lot this summer, as they are nesting not far away.  One friend has lost all his fish, and had to restock (and fence them in).  But the heron is not a summer bird, as I see it.  Of course, they are with us through all four seasons, but I seem to notice them more in the autumn and winter.  I remember seeing a winter field not far from here dotted with herons, maybe seven or eight of them each standing singly;  I'm not sure what they were hoping to catch.

So, swifts gone, and herons about, and the nights drawing in;  is August really the first month of autumn?