Monday 27 April 2015

Swifts arrive!


Long term readers of this frankly sporadic blog will know that I keep an eye out throughout the latter half of every April for the return of the Swifts, and they finally arrived this morning.  I saw two, very high up.  It made my heart soar!

I love these birds with a passion, their sheer exuberance as they chase each other across the sky, squealing with delight is something I look forward to every year without fail.

Although I didn't do a blog post about it (sorry), The Lovely Husband and I went to Florence for a week last summer and the whole place completely blew me away (I burst into tears the first time I saw the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral it was so overwhelming) but the thing I was absolutely not expecting and made my jaw hit the floor was the sheer number of Swifts tearing around the sky.  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them - in the distance over the rooftops there was so many it was almost like watching a swirling tornado forming!  There were literally too many to count, and up until then, I thought the 50 or so we get here where I live was a lot!

I took video from our hotel window - they're tricky buggers to film but hopefully you get an idea of what it sounded like (check out the atmospheric Sunday morning bell-tolling) as well as seeing the gorgeous terracotta roofs and the blue, blue sky (sorry the quality's not that great!) -






1 comment:

Jan said...

Oh that is gorgeous! Thanks for posting it.