Swifts and Us: The Life of the Bird that Sleeps in the Sky

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This republication has been made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, as part of the Oxford Swift City project. By submitting a review you grant us the right to display and use it in any way; please read our General Legal Notices for full details.

Seed to Dust by Marc Hamer: Hamer paints a loving picture of his final year at the 12-acre British garden he tended for decades.

Built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the company’s new flagship, she sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. The mix between Shenanigan’s headfirst action stance and Phenomena’s methodical scientific method is really fun, and I can’t think of another kids’ book that has a team like this. This storyline combines well with Shenanigan’s desire to know if she’s predestined to be a risk-taker and mischief-maker.

I happened to have read and reviewed 12 of the nominees already, and I have a few others in progress.I saved this book for the season of swifts and I'm glad I did as I could read whilst listening to the screeching birds fly past each evening. Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour: As an aimless twentysomething, Gilmour tried to rekindle a relationship with his unreliable poet father at the same time that he and his wife were pondering starting a family of their own. Sarah Gibson worked in the conservation sector for over twenty years, soaking up knowledge of nature in all its wondrous variety. The Circling Sky by Neil Ansell: Hoping to reclaim an ancestral connection, Ansell visited the New Forest some 30 times between January 2019 and January 2020, observing the unfolding seasons and the many uncommon and endemic species its miles house.

Rescuing insects from a swimming pool in Fledgling by Hannah Bourne-Taylor and In the Quaker Hotel by Helen Tookey. This regular heartbeat of migratory arrival and departure gives swifts, along with swallows and martins, a special resonance. So many dedicated swift people it is inspiring if (like most natural history/environmental books) a little depressing at times.She organises swift walks in her home town, advocates for awareness of their plight and wills them to take up residence in the boxes she has put up for them around her house. This is an exquisitely written book about identity and wordplay that's as warm, masterful and up-to-date as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Nest materials are acquired in flight; therefore only materials light enough to be lofted high into the air are used. And then there’s Fauna, one of the kindest Family members, whose identical twin is one of Shenanigan’s top suspects. Swift feels safe and secure in his nest, but when he sees all the other birds flying to a new home on the other side of the world, he realizes that he doesn’t want to be left behind.

It’s a linked short story collection set in Magadan in northeast Russia – known for Stalin’s forced-labour camps. Much of the book is devoted to the author's travels visiting swift nesting areas throughout Europe and Britain. If you find a grounded swift, she learns from bitter experience, keep it in a box with air holes and give it water on a cotton bud, but don’t feed or throw it up in the air. As a fun bonus, I learned some new words with this book, but I barely noticed it because I learned them through meeting a family of lovable weirdos; that’s way more fun than a vocabulary lesson.There was a time when the distinctions between right and wrong seemed indisputable, and doing right felt good. Nothing in The Swifts is especially grim, as even the deaths are presented more with a dark humor than anything of particular menace, but I was surprised by the body count in this book.