THE DEVIL'S BIRD
I've mentioned before that my love of words just about matches my love of birds. I'm fascinated by unusual words, why they mean what they do and how they came into being. And they don't come much more weird and wonderful than the word, Onomatopoeia.
Onomatopoeia roughly means 'a word that sounds like what it relates to'. In bird terms this can be frequently applied to bird names, for example Cuckoo, Chiffchaff or Hoopoe. All of these birds and many others have been named after their calls; their names are, by definition, onomatopoeic. Every day's a school day.
There's one bird that can currently be seen in large, noisy numbers (at least in the area where I live). Its common name – the Swift – isn't in itself onomatopoeic but ask old people up and down the country what the local name for the bird is and you will get some very descriptive answers.
Screecher, Screamer, Squeaker, Squealer, Black Screech – all of these are old names for the same bird, used at a time when travel between towns and counties was much less common so a local name stayed local for generations. Some called it Screw because they thought that was what the screaming bird was 'saying'. The same with the name Horse Martin – it looks superficially a bit similar to House and Sand Martins, and some people heard its cry as sounding like the word, “Horse”. I can't hear either of those words in its call myself but these came from a simpler time, before television let alone social media. Can you believe such days existed? How did we ever survive...
The Swift certainly lives up to is name, being the fastest of all birds in a straight, level flight. Some individuals have been recorded as flying 69 mph, point to point. And they aren't just sprinters, they're long-distance specialists too, flying around 3,500 miles each spring from Africa to Britain, and then back again at the end of every summer.
So how do they accomplish such amazing speed and distance? Well it's evolution, obviously. We know that now but in less enlightened times there were whispers that these evil-looking birds had made an unholy pact with you-know-who, the red bloke 'downstairs' with the horns and the trident. If you can play a keyboard, this is the time to bang out some spooky minor chords – Duh, duh, daaaaah!!!! Their ear-splitting calls and dark colouring earned them the names Devil, Devil's Bird, Devling (little devil) and many other local derivatives. Put the word “Devil's” before any of the onomatopoeic names listed at the start of this piece and there's a good chance that, somewhere in the country, those two words will have been the local name for the humble Swift. And they don't even act like normal birds. They do everything on the wing – eat, sleep, mate – because (wait for it, this is what our forebears actually thought).... they don't have any feet! Even their Latin name, Apus Apus, means 'without feet'. Of course we know now that they do have feet but they just have tiny legs.
Swallows, House and Sand Martins, the birds that tend to fill the air just before the arrival of the Swifts, are seen as such positive, cheerful creatures. It's a pleasure to see them return at the start of each summer. But following them each year are these noisy black crescents, making the terrible sound (thought our ancestors) of sinners' souls being dragged down to Hades as they chased the aforementioned Hirundines around the sky. It followed then that doing bad things to Swifts, such as killing a bird or removing their nests from your property, would incur the wrath of their Satanic master and bring bad luck on you, your family, your crops, your animals... It's utter rubbish of course. How could people ever believe such tosh? If only they'd had Google they'd have been able to find the truth in a few clicks.
I said at the start of this blog that I was seeing a lot of Swifts in the air this year and that's true, I am. But only in relation to last year or the one before. Compare them with the number of birds that I could see in my childhood and it's a totally different story. The number of Swifts making it to our shores each summer has fallen by over 50% in the last 25 years. It's yet another shocking tale of bird decline but in this case there's something that we can all do to help, something simple and fun too.
One of the main reason for their decline is the lack of gaps in roofs and eaves. Our buildings are so well maintained these days that they aren't able to take advantage of these potential nesting spaces. So think about installing a Swift box in the eaves of your home or workplace, if possible. They're simple to build or you can buy one cheaply enough and, with luck, you might get your own family of Devil Birds calling your house their home next spring. We have some up in the courtyard at Old Moor. Come and have a look at them. You might get inspiration, and while you're here you might see some of the following birds too. And you might even see me...