
The mysterious life of birds who never come down - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/magazine/vesper-flights.html
======
LargoLasskhyfv
This is about (common) swifts. I know some things about them.

Because a very long time ago I raised one, which was very difficult, but also
enjoyable.

On the way home from last day of school before summer holidays I saw some bird
chick on the ground, next to a closed wall of bricks, on the walkway, between
one-way street with heavy traffic and a steep hill on the other side. I didn't
know what to do, except _not_ to blindly grab it and take it home, because
sometimes the parents come and feed them. So I stood back about a dozen meters
and waited for half an hour. No bird parents came, traffic on the street
roared on and on. Couldn't make sense of where it would have fallen off,
couldn't put it back where it came from beacause blank wall of bricks 4 to 5
meters high to some backyard was closed to the street. No doors/gates or
something like that. Walked around the block to find entry, unsuccessfully.
Walked back to where the chick still was, sitting miserably on the ground,
almost no feathers, just some dark gray fluff, pink skin shining through.

Stood there and thought: _Should I, shouldn 't I?_ What will Mommy say?

Knelt down to see if it had anything icky on it, which it hadn't and put it
into the left cheat pocket of my shirt. Didn't even struggle. Just looked
around with its tiny dark eyes.

Some twenty minutes later, at home, unexpectedly no storm of rage because
bringing back strange animals. Instead phoning around for some veterinary who
does birds.

I somehow had the feeling that timing was essential here, so I grabbed my
street bicycle without having lunch and speeded to the veterinarian. Again
with the chick in my left shirt pocket, was afraid it would try to get out,
but it seemed content to just look out from there.

The veterinarian examined it under a light and looking glass and found a hand
full of tiny mites. Eeek! I haven't seen them! Strangely there were none in my
shirt pocket.

Anyways, vet couldn't make out what it was exactly, because too young, settled
for mostly some sort of swift and told me what to expect, and that it was a
stupid thing to do, because if swift this would never be _my_ bird, because
they are wild things, almost always in the air, and nobody ever successfully
raised one so far.

I answered that I know it's no Budgie or Canary, that I waited for the parents
to show up, which they didn't, couldn't locate where it came from to put it
back there, so certain death by car, cat, starvation was imminent.

So I got some tubes with different gels in it, which I had to give the chick
with the food. Which was a mix of living mealworms to be obtained from fishing
ponds where people use them as bait, deep frozen crickets from pet food
stores, raw minced meat with egg white and yolk mixed in, and any living
insects I managed to shoot down with the rubber rings from preserving jars :-)

Every _two hours_ , at least! _24 /7_! For _two months_! Ugh!

Anyways, I did it, went to a museum of natural history to speak with an
ornithologist there. Drove there by subway with it in my shirtpocket again :-)

Ornithologist confirmed bias of vet towards common swift, and lend me some
books, plus a list of more titles from the library for learning the swarming
patterns, to which I should release it when they appear in the sky.

So my summer holidays were effectively gone by having to care for it around
the clock, without pauses longer than two hours. I didn't really mind, and
chick neither. It grew into something very streamlined, very dark brown and
shiny feathers. It was primed to me and not afraid. I could put it onto my
shoulder and it stayed there.

I worried a little about it being so lazy, so I trained it by putting it into
my hands while standing, and then going down fast with my hands, to let its
instincts kick in. Which they did, by spreading its wings.

Later, when it made strange rattling sounds by rhythmically spreading its
wings to get the feathers out of their growing sheets and I found it on top of
the curtains when coming back into the room, I knew it was time to get it to
fly.

Which I did by having it sit on my shoulder while bicycling around at 40 to 60
km/h in the forest on excellently paved ways.

At first it didn't let go of my shirt, just spread its wings and lifting it a
little, or beating its wings and tickling the side of my head that way. But it
wouldn't let go!

I had to go to about 40km/h with the bird in one hand and only one hand on the
handlebar, then throwing it _UP_!

Screech! Screech! Back to my shoulders. Hrrmpf. I repeated that I don't know
how often anymore until I had it flying after me for some minutes without
immediately going back to my shoulders.

I extended these "lessons" to places where I knew there were many insects in
the air, like standing ponds, fields with cows on them, and it worked, it just
got its flies from the air!

Seeing it doing that really took a burden from my mind.

Took it ontop the tower of some castle ruin, over bridges over rivers, onto
watch towers in the forest, tried to show it all it could be confronted with
in its life within my means, which meant from my shoulder while racing my
bicycle.

It really liked me going downhill from the forest back home at anywhere
between 65km/h to 85km/h tops for maybe 20 seconds.

It also liked sitting squat on my chest while I laid on my back, wings half
spread, eyes closed, me very lightly stroking its head with one finger...
_cheelp, cheelp_ If it were a cat it would have purred.

Also it never shat on me. Neither into the nest which I've built for it into
the corner of the room, onto a halfheight cabinet out of some towels. Always
nicely outside, onto the old newspapers which I put under and around it. Clean
bird!

Then the time came to throw it up into the swarms, like I intended from the
beginning. Took me about ten times until I could see it fly towards the swarm
without coming back.

Instincts kicking in, Mission Accomplished! Proud and sad at the same time.

Called the vet which wouldn't believe at first, and then told her what I did,
how, in which sequence and so on.

Moved away from there shortly after, so I don't know if it came back some
time, hope it didn't get caught in the nets which some people in the south
raise to catch them for food.

Anyways, about 30 years later I came back home to see a bird on the ground of
the long hallway. It was a common swift, somehow got caught in there, with no
way out. I tried to slowly grab it, but it panicked, tried to fly away, bumped
into the glass, against the wall, so I stopped trying to grab it.

Thought a little, went for a towel to throw that over it, came back, havn't
even spread the towl yet, it fluttered again, spread my arms wide to stop it,
then it bumped into my belly and clawed into my windjacket there.

I slowly lowered my arms and stood very still for a minute, then tiptoed the
long floor, down the stairs, away from the house, stood very still again,
looked at it. It looked back. After a minute or so I asked "don't you want to
be back with your swarm?"

And it let itself fall down backwards over one wing, and going up to the swarm
which was there at the time.

A few days later, me on the balcony, seeing and hearing the swarm again I
thought to myself: why not putting back on the very yellow wind jacket I wore
when I rescued that swift?

I did so, and one little fellow came down to do some aerobatics a few meters
from my face, loudly _cheeping_ and _chirrping_.

They do remember and recognize you. I'm sure of that!

The really strange thing is it looked exactly like pictures of common swifts,
except of the white. What is white on them was something like bronze/copper on
mine, depending on the light.

~~~
Scarbutt
_They do remember and recognize you. I 'm sure of that!_

Don't want to rob you from that emotion but Swifts can't live for 30 years.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
I didn't mean to imply it was the same bird. That would be really unlikely,
not only by the time, but also the different place i live in now. Just that it
remembered at least my signal yellow wind jacket, and deemed it worthy to come
down from the high up swarm alone and doing aerobatics for a few seconds while
making untypical sounds in front of my face.

Why else should it do that(alone), apart from its swarm maybe 50 to 100meters
up, not coming with it?

So what i meant to say was rather something like they(wild Birds in general)
do remember you, even though not being grown up with/by humans.

~~~
Cheyana
Maybe it was morphic resonance.

------
djrogers
How on earth do you have an entire article about a specific type of bird
without a single picture of one? They don't charge more for 4 color prints on
the internet people...

~~~
bookofjoe
[https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sxs...](https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk01vLVeDVDIaQvxmAJUlud6w8Cx6TQ%3A1596138517620&source=hp&biw=945&bih=511&ei=FSQjX_XtItGoytMPnOaH4AU&q=bird+swift&oq=bird+swift&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAA6BAgjECc6BQgAELEDUJsQWKswYI8yaABwAHgAgAGCAYgB4ASSAQM5LjGYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZw&sclient=img&ved=0ahUKEwi1zOiq3_XqAhVRlHIEHRzzAVwQ4dUDCAc&uact=5)

~~~
ssalka
Holy swift [https://i.imgur.com/e5htNkh.png](https://i.imgur.com/e5htNkh.png)

------
whoisjuan
"...birds who never come down"

That's factually incorrect. They nest and sometimes hibernate. They can and
usually do spend the majority of their lives in the air, but they DO come
down.

Maybe it's too stupid to even bring this up, but they could have added an
'almost never' into that title for the sake of scientific accuracy.

~~~
dguest
I assumed that they must come down to nest, of course, but this quote

> They mate on the wing. And while young martins and swallows return to their
> nests after their first flights, young swifts do not. As soon as they tip
> themselves free of the nest hole, they start flying, and they will not stop
> flying for two or three years, bathing in rain, feeding on airborne insects,
> winnowing fast and low to scoop fat mouthfuls of water from lakes and
> rivers.

really made it sound like they don't touch the ground at all for two or three
years. I suppose this is possible if they only feed on insects, don't need to
land to sleep, and can rest their bodies while flying.

EDIT: I found an article which supports the idea that they might stay aloft
for months on end
([https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.09.014](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.09.014)).
They do land, just for very short periods of time and less than 1% of their
time outside breeding season.

------
pcl
Frigate birds also spend most of their lives aloft. They struggle to take off
if they land on solid ground or water.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigatebird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigatebird)

~~~
xwdv
The image in that Wikipedia article then must be a rare photo of a frigate on
the ground.

~~~
lordgrenville
The article text claims that they "roost on trees or cliffs at night".

~~~
kwk1
I think the point was that they have difficulty initiating flight without
having something to fall off of.

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/qLJXA](https://archive.is/qLJXA)

------
miked85
The first paragraph is bizarre. She finds a dead bird and immediately decides
to take home and put it in her freezer?

~~~
lfnoise
..and for months in the freezer, apparently.

------
fortran77
And you can eat their nests!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest)

------
stareatgoats
We have a pair of swifts that return every year and nest under the roof tiles
of our house deep in a forest. I can totally sympathize with this author's awe
towards the tiny marvels. It feels like a privilege and a blessing to have
them come visit, arriving from some southern African country every year.

Happy to have learned something new too: vesper flights.

------
Zenbit_UX
Not what I expect when I click on a NYT link...

What a strange individual, picking up dead birds and wondering what to do with
them, while admitting to polishing the skulls of other dead creatures in the
past, then deciding: "yup, my freezer is a good place for this dead animal".

Later on (after the analogies to angels) she admits a past history of bullying
and I couldn't help myself but say, "well duh".

------
djmips
Sky fish.

~~~
aaron695
I do like the idea some animals live in the three dimensional fluid above us.

Why don't we.

