Summer can start - the Swifts have arrived!

As has become customary at Jones Towers at this time of year, the last few days has seen me, when out in the garden, staring intently up into the currently blue, blue sky, awaiting the arrival of our summer visitors from Africa.

Last year I saw my first one on 22 April, and today, 21 April, at 5.45pm, I saw the first one of 2011.  I was, as last year, sitting by the plastic-houses at the end of my tiny garden, sowing vegetable seeds for the allotment, when TLH came out for a chat.  I said to him that I'd been checking the sky constantly for swifts and, as I said that, I looked up and saw one!  How's that for timing?!? And I'm extra pleased because TLH saw it as well.  Just the one, solitary crescent wheeling high, high up in the sky.

I understand it takes a good couple of days for them to complete the journey so I'm expecting more and more to arrive over the next week until the air is filled with my favourite sound of the summer (apart from the pop of a wine bottle, or the cracking of ice in a glass as a Pimms is poured over it), that of gangs of swifts chasing each other at high speed just above the rooftops, squealing for all their worth.

Summer 2011 has officially arrived!