Little Swift

Monday 5 May 1997 was a Bank Holiday. My own car was in dock, so I had hired a car for the weekend – trouble was, it was a deal off a local firm that was a cheap daily rate, but not unlimited mileage. Also, I had discovered over the previous couple of days that the steering was a bit cranky. So, I was tempted by a Wood Sandpiper at Pennington Marshes in Hampshire that would have been a year tick, but I decided not to drive that far and headed for the Exe estuary instead.

By a little after midday I had been there a while, but not seen much of note. Then, bang – Little Swift on the Isle of Wight! Big, big need – a lot bigger listers than me back then still needed it too. Here I go then! Swifts are notoriously difficult to twitch, as they can disappear at any moment, but can also reappear, sometimes hours later. Some will hang around all day, but very few stay longer. So the only tactic to employ really is to commit early and hard, get to the site and see what the score is, accepting that the chance of connecting is likely to be a lot less than 50:50.

Trouble was, like I said earlier, it was a Bank Holiday Monday. Traffic was a nightmare – sheer volume plus an accident or two gumming up the works. The swift was at Bembridge, at the east end of the island, and most birders were heading for the ferry from Portsmouth. For me, however, the best bet looked to be the Lymington-Yarmouth ferry and a drive the length of the Isle of Wight. If I could get there. It took three and a half hours to get to the ferry terminal, to find I’d just missed a ferry and had to wait nearly an hour for the next one. All the while messages were saying that the bird was showing very well whizzing up and down the clifftop. If I’d chosen to go for the Wood Sand I would have been in prime position, and on site by now, and I knew it – instead I was kicking my heels and doing my pieces. All I could do was book the car on the next ferry and wait.

While I was waiting, Matt Prince and Nicky Bacchiu turned up from Devon too, and as the ferry price was per car, I invited them to join me. I had stressed out to the max, and as we at last drove off the ferry at Yarmouth, bird still showing, I lost it. I’ve pulled some strokes while driving on twitches, but that afternoon (early evening really) I did things I had not done before, and have not since. Matt once told me they realised what they were in for when I decided to beat the line of traffic off the ferry by going round a mini roundabout the wrong way, and as for when I overtook a car on a blind uphill bend – well, the pitch of Matt’s voice from the back betrayed genuine fear. It was years before either of them got in a car with me again after that day.

Happily, we got lucky and arrived in Bembridge in one piece. The bird had left the clifftop, however, and its current whereabouts were unknown. We joined the search to relocate it. Time passed, rendering the crazy driving earlier pretty pointless as it happened. It must have been nearly an hour later when suddenly there was a shout and a run on. On one of the surburban streets inland from the cliff a small band of birders swelled to a crowd, all staring upwards. There, right overhead, was the Little Swift! Fabulous views as it circled at rooftop height above us – we could even see the paleness of the undertail as it spread it. The birders around me were a sea of beaming smiles.

The swift and the flock of hirundines it was loosely associated with moved a little, and the crowd followed it, down some wooden steps to a new vantage point. The bird remained viewable from there until dusk. As the light started to fade we gave up, having had our fill, and were sat in the car when the last birders turned up, including LGRE, who hared past us and down the steps just in time to see the swift before it headed off to roost.

We headed back towards the ferry in the dark, at a rather more sedate pace, much to Matt and Nicky’s relief. Later I found out that a friend had rolled his car somewhere in Hampshire on the way down – he was OK, though he spent a night in hospital under observation, the car was a write-off, and of course he missed the bird. A salutary lesson after my earlier antics – suffice to say I’ve paid more attention to the phrase ‘Drive to Arrive’ ever since.