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12 May 2023 A swift half?

A few birthdays ago, my sister gifted me a t-shirt whose caption reads "The Common Swift sleeps mainly on the wing". Indeed, it does - and that is one of many remarkable things about one of my very favourite birds (nay, my absolute favourite!) So it's a shame that the bird depicted on said t-shirt looks rather like a Barn Swallow. Such apparent ineptitude also characterises my photography in relation to swifts - the subject of a new book by Mark Cocker, and of Hannah Bourne-Taylor's campaign, The Feather Speech - at least until last month. When in Lesvos (more about which later), I had a wonderful pre-breakfast hour with swifts in the fishing village of Lesvos. The light was clear, the Aegean sky was blue, and the birds were both low and close, as they circled a restaurant building, seeking to nests under its eaves. Here are some of the results.