On top of the David Attenborough Building
there is a colony of disembodied swifts
screeing in shrill digital loops a conservationist’s
best guess at a translation for
We’re here
There’s a place for you
Come join us.
Last summer, the ruse failed.
No flesh-and-feather swifts
found these city-centre nesting boxes
despite looming need for high-tower refuge
against the bite of decline
into code amber alarm.
They were one tower less
in the loss of lofty crags and holes
for hatching soft new swifts.
~
Working our daily tasks
at computers behind the tower windows
where the whirring screeches play,
we hear only frequency and pitch
perhaps designed to fray human nerves.
We mutter,
Bloody swifts.
Though we too are conservationists,
we have papers to write, PhDs to complete.
We ask them to diverge swift hours
from working hours. They do,
but turn up the crepuscular cries, saying,
We hope they hear.
~
Tonight, in the evening shadow of the tower,
I hear swerving screams above me and I know
from the pound of my veins
that this is no meaningless recorded keening,
but fierce aerial speech veiled
in scaly head, forked tail,
trilling throat, tremulous scythes,
sunset flare and liquid air
transposed to blitzkrieg feathers.
They are saying,
We’re here.
I am saying,
Join us.
An avid lover of nature, place, and words, Anne Thomas is studying for a PhD in Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She plans to become a professional ecologist while also writing her way through the world
