No British summer would be complete without the screech of Swifts darting overhead. This distinctive call is incomparably evocative of a blissful, warm summers day; for me a trigger of childhood memories playing out in the fields during ever-lasting school breaks or later, time spent in a third-floor apartment in St Ives, Cornwall (heaven!) where, once evening fell, a group of overzealous Swifts would rise up steep streets from the town below and erupt volcano-like inches from the old wooden window frames, plucking insects from the humid air at what seemed a million miles per hour, screeches reverberating so loud as if they were all but in the room before squealing excitedly back into the streets below, their whistle trailing off like a distant firework.

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