Swiftly

Perhaps the most charming discovery of this visit has been the swifts. 

I had never heard the whistling call before, that I began hearing every morning and evening from the tiny, scruffy garden across the street (the one with magnolias, bamboo, and a camellia before it died, that I’d thought more than once, bemusedly, was a sliver of Louisiana following me, though a pale imitation of the larger gardens Marianne D’Artigaux’s (whose grave is the oldest still marked in the “American” Cemetery in Natchitoches, of her sudden, untimely death in 1797) son planted at his and his wife’s chateaunear Nantes to remind him of the colony where he’d grown up). I couldn’t see what was making it, until, coming back up the street late one afternoon, I looked up at the sky—and saw them, their forked tails, swooping and diving through the air. Aha.

My first thought was chimney swifts, for that was what they reminded me of. But via the wonders of the internet, listening to their call on YouTube, I realized that wasn’t it. But, gradually sifting through options, eliminating swallows as well, I came to “swifts,” native to Europe, and whose call, in the end, was a perfect match. Now I smile, hearing them every day, knowing who they are (martinets, in French). I’m not sure of their migration habits, but perhaps they’re gone by the time I’m usually here, and that’s the reason I’d never encountered them, until now.