The mysterious life of birds who never come down
This is about (common) swifts. I know some things about them.<p>Because a very long time ago I raised one, which was very difficult, but also enjoyable.<p>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&#x27;t know what to do, except <i>not</i> 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&#x27;t make sense of where it would have fallen off, couldn&#x27;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&#x2F;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.<p>Stood there and thought: <i>Should I, shouldn&#x27;t I?</i>
What will Mommy say?<p>Knelt down to see if it had anything icky on it, which it hadn&#x27;t and put it into the left cheat pocket of my shirt.
Didn&#x27;t even struggle. Just looked around with its tiny dark eyes.<p>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.<p>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.<p>The veterinarian examined it under a light and looking glass and found a hand full of tiny mites. Eeek! I haven&#x27;t seen them! Strangely there were none in my shirt pocket.<p>Anyways, vet couldn&#x27;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 <i>my</i> bird, because they are wild things, almost always in the air, and nobody ever successfully raised one so far.<p>I answered that I know it&#x27;s no Budgie or Canary, that I waited for the parents to show up, which they didn&#x27;t, couldn&#x27;t locate where it came from to put it back there, so certain death by car, cat, starvation was imminent.<p>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 :-)<p>Every <i>two hours</i>, at least! <i>24&#x2F;7</i>! For <i>two months</i>! Ugh!<p>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 :-)<p>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.<p>So my summer holidays were effectively gone by having to care for it around the clock, without pauses longer than two hours. I didn&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Which I did by having it sit on my shoulder while bicycling around at 40 to 60 km&#x2F;h in the forest on excellently paved ways.<p>At first it didn&#x27;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&#x27;t let go!<p>I had to go to about 40km&#x2F;h with the bird in one hand and only one hand on the handlebar, then throwing it <i>UP</i>!<p>Screech! Screech! Back to my shoulders. Hrrmpf.
I repeated that I don&#x27;t know how often anymore until I had it flying after me for some minutes without immediately going back to my shoulders.<p>I extended these &quot;lessons&quot; 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!<p>Seeing it doing that really took a burden from my mind.<p>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.<p>It really liked me going downhill from the forest back home at anywhere between 65km&#x2F;h to 85km&#x2F;h tops for maybe 20 seconds.<p>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... <i>cheelp, cheelp</i>
If it were a cat it would have purred.<p>Also it never shat on me. Neither into the nest which I&#x27;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!<p>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.<p>Instincts kicking in, Mission Accomplished! Proud and sad at the same time.<p>Called the vet which wouldn&#x27;t believe at first, and then told her what I did, how, in which sequence and so on.<p>Moved away from there shortly after, so I don&#x27;t know if it came back some time, hope it didn&#x27;t get caught in the nets which some people in the south raise to catch them for food.<p>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.<p>Thought a little, went for a towel to throw that over it, came back, havn&#x27;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.<p>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 &quot;don&#x27;t you want to be back with your swarm?&quot;<p>And it let itself fall down backwards over one wing, and going up to the swarm which was there at the time.<p>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?<p>I did so, and one little fellow came down to do some aerobatics a few meters from my face, loudly <i>cheeping</i>
and <i>chirrping</i>.<p>They do remember and recognize you. I&#x27;m sure of that!<p>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&#x2F;copper on mine, depending on the light.