To feel my spirits lift when the swifts return?

[Thesoundofscience]

I’ve just seen my first swifts of the year and it instantly lifted my mood. For me, it properly feels like the start of summer when they show up. I love watching them zooming around overhead and their nonstop screeching is the sound of summer to me!

Only two so far. I’m looking forward to watching their numbers grow over the next few weeks, and seeing how many there’ll be by the time they head off again.

Our house martins have arrived back safely. I'm always really happy to see them, and love listening to them chatting away to each other in their nest in the gable above my bedroom window.

All this lovely spring life talk makes me think of this beautiful medieval song:
Sumer is icumen in,
Loud sing cuckoo!
Groweth seed and bloweth mead
And springeth the wood now.
Sing cuckoo!

Ewe bleateth after lamb,
Cow loweth after calf,
Bullock starteth, buck farteth,
Merry sing cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!
Well singest thou cuckoo,
Nor cease thou never now!

Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo!
Sing cuckoo, sing cuckoo now!

Anon. (13th Century)
I

We have house martins nesting in our roof eaves, we’ve been in the house 13 years and love them. I saw my first one last week in the heat but it’s cooled this weekend, I cannot wait for them to return.

I haven’t seen the swifts all week but today we have three zooming about.
i also saw a hedgehog in the garden yesterday. Love this time of year.

I've just been reading an article about starlings by Eric Brown, wildlife columnist in my local newspaper. There's a beautiful illustration of 'a shimmering starling' with its 'complex pattern on feathers featuring white dots and a glossy sheen of purple, blues and greens.' (I can't find the article online to post it.)

They have declined by 85% in numbers since 1979 and are now red-listed as being of great concern: It's suspected that insecticides on lawns and intensive farming deprive them of food. He advises providing a lawn and nestbox and not using insecticide.

Ted Hughes wrote 'Starlings have come' with vivid images of them in flight.
a-poem-a-day-project.blogspot.com/2013/11/day-494-starlings.html

He also wrote 'Swifts', which captures that delight and lifting of mood that we feel at the arrival of these other heralds of summer:

"They’ve made it again,
Which means the globe’s still working, the Creation’s
Still waking refreshed, our summer’s
Still all to come —
And here they are, here they are again
Erupting across yard stones
Shrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers,
Speedway goggles, international mobsters —"

martyncrucefix.com/2015/05/13/ted-hughes-swifts/