The swifts have gone, yet I’m smiling.
This suggests to me recovery is under way, for I always mourn the departure of the swifts until nature prods me in the ribs and shows me something to smile about.
They have been gone from my portion of the sky for more than a week now and they always leave behind a vacancy, an absence I feel keenly.
I’ve never tried to rationalise it and I have long since accepted that’s just the way it is: I’m overjoyed when they arrive, I regret their going.
There always seems to be a lull at this time, these last few swiftless days of summer.
After the long weeks of their sky-dance, shrilled anthems and flat-out slaloms round the rooftops, not to mention their phenomenal, soaring explorations of the highest of the high hilltops, after all that, a quiet space seems somehow appropriate.
It’s like when you have just listened to the last few notes of a phenomenal piece of music and for a while you don’t want to hear anything else at all. You want to inhabit silence to let the music linger and sink in.
My brief melancholic condition is symptomatic of the fact that I love having them around.
For those first few days of swift silence, the quietness of those airspaces seem to hold the sense of them, even as the birds themselves are crossing some Mediterranean shore and casting their shadows and shrilling conversation on the rooftops of Sicily.
So why am I smiling? Because I am talking to a young buzzard.
Better still, we have been exchanging snatches of conversation for several minutes and the young bird is, as yet, unaware that I am not another buzzard.
I have been walking the woodland path near the particular rooftops where the swifts nested and would embellish my summer evenings. Into the silence they left behind, nature has insinuated the young buzzard – or rather, its voice.
The woodland climbs away from the path, so there are layered depths of trees and the very tallest are beside the path and up at the top of the wood.
In between is a sodden no-man’s-land of natural springs, a heavily overgrown pond and a healthy swathe of willows and alders.
The young buzzard is in there and (I can tell from the sound of its voice) on the move.
This means we can’t see each other. But after self-consciously checking there is no one else on the path in either direction, I have started to call back, making a passable imitation of an adult buzzard’s down-curving cry.
The young one calls in immediate response and after a few more exchanges, it has obviously begun to change direction and is coming my way.
A huge willow leans towards me about 50 yards away and in evening sunlight, its pale grey-green foliage looks like a tower of silk.
Suddenly, the buzzard bursts from the depths of the wood and veers round my side of the willow, catching the sun, momentarily embellishing the beauty of the tree, calling as it flies past.
I call back and for the first time, it sees the source of the call and dives back into the depths of the trees.
However, I keep calling, it keeps responding and suddenly, it is flying down the line of the path about 50ft up, right over my head, looking down and glowing in the sunlight, looking for all the world like a compact eagle.
It banks up into the willow and perches there in sunlight.
It keeps its back to me but its head is turned in my direction and when it calls again and I call back, it turns to face me, angles its head on one side and seems to be appraising the situation, coming to terms with this new information: that the buzzard-caller is not another buzzard.
It’s quiet and still for a couple of minutes, then a proper buzzard calls from the far end of the wood and its head turns towards the sound.
Then it’s gone. I can hear its voice calling periodically and growing distant as it cleaves through the heart of the wood.
The swifts have gone but nature’s year goes on turning and if you are tuned in to its endless pageant, there’s usually something to smile about waiting in the wings.