Ingham’s W RLD

BRITAIN’S most political bird arrived right on cue yesterday – just in time for the local elections. As I entered the polling station I glanced skywards and a pair of swifts scythed through the air, my first of the year. They looked none the worse for having been on the wing ever since rearing their chicks last August.

These masters of the sky have spent our winter devouring flies and spiders high above the Congo rainforests and may even have glimpsed the Indian Ocean from over Mozambique.

In my area the first swifts always start screaming over the rooftops on May’s polling day. They’re sure to be Brexiters. They cannot wait to quit Europe, always among the first summer visitors to head back south.

They are the latest arrivals among 15 million summer visitors pouring in from Africa. In recent weeks I’ve been reunited with warblers, swallows and sand martins and this week I heard a familiar call and saw five house martins swooping over a church tower.

But these birds are not automatons, hard- wired to head relentlessly north in spring and south in autumn.

Since 2011 the British Trust for Ornithology has satellite- tagged cuckoos and found that migration can be very flexible. Lancashireborn Larry was steaming north through central France a week ago only to hit strong northerlies. He turned back to sit out the big chill near Bordeaux before resuming his trek north.

Then there’s David, who has just returned to Wales for a fourth summer. Two years ago he got to Dorset, shivered in the cold and flounced back to France before returning north when the weather improved.

That autumn another cuckoo, Indy, refuelled on caterpillars near Venice then flew south. But 100 miles from Libya he met strong headwinds and returned briefly all the way to northern Italy where he knew he’d get a meal.

If birds get it wrong they pay a heavy price. Take Vigilamus the cuckoo who has just returned to his home on the North Yorkshire Moors by RAF Fylingdales. This sun- loving bird was greeted by snow on the ground and died of cold, hunger and exhaustion.

Migration is a big, Leicester City- sized gamble. Birds can arrive here early, grab the best territories and mates but die in a cold snap or get here late, risk missing out on love but gamble on replacing early birds killed in a chill.

So maybe my swifts are the smartest of all. They arrive late and leave early – and minimise the risks of our topsy- turvy weather. WOODLAND flowers are at their best right now. At the National Trust’s Emmetts Garden in Kent the banks of bluebells are like a purple haze. My pal Stuart James, editor of the Daily Star Sunday, showed me the dainty white stars of wild garlic, ramsons and wood anemones, violets bejewelling the grass, golden rafts of primroses and the mauve- veined white flowers of wood sorrel. Instead of looking up for the birds I learned to look down for nature’s magic carpet. THE name’s Bond, Jamesbondia. A group of Caribbean flowers has been named after the US birder whose name was appropriated by 007 author Ian Fleming, reports Plant Biosystems. Like Bond, the flowers are very colourful. GREEN TIP: Lavender, rosemary, catmint, lemon balm, citronella grass and peppermint all repel mozzies. A BRIT biologist has won the “Nobel Prize” for conservation. Professor Carl Jones of the University of East Anglia won the prestigious £ 172,000 Indianapolis Prize for helping save 16 bird, reptile and mammal species on Mauritius. The Mauritius kestrel was down to four in the wild when he started. Now hundreds hunt free. Top man. LET’S hope for clear skies on Monday afternoon when a rare transit of the sun by Mercury will take place. The planet will be a tiny dot 150 times smaller than the sun, says Europlanet. But don’t look with the naked eye or even sunglasses. Watch online at the European Space Agency website.