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December 2020 December 2020

if people lived in response to that it might be exactly what is needed now as Once both parents have arrived they will mate and the female will lay 2 or 3
always! white eggs. White because they are more easily located in the dark inside the
nest site.
So here we are going into Advent and heading for Christmas. We have all the
ingredients of a story we know well and have told often but our circumstances The eggs are incubated for 19 to 21 days before hatching and naked chicks
this year are different. It might just be that we hear it fresh and feel it’s power new brooded continuously for the first week.
because the Christmas story is not just a retelling of what happened when God
Adults come back to the nest to feed the chicks several times a day with a ball of
came among us in Bethlehem just over 2,000 years ago. The point of the story is insects in their throat pouch.
what God does now.
In spells of bad weather the birds will fly great distances to find food; the chicks
The hope of Advent that leads to Christmas is of our seeing the glory of God
come among us full of grace and truth. The hope, and the challenge this and grow extremely fast and can survive several days without food.
every year, is in how we live in response to such a precious gift. Once their feathers have grown the young swifts perform ‘press-ups’ in the
nesting area to strengthen their wings.
+Nicholas Sarum
They leave the nest after 6 to 8 weeks around mid to late July but will wait for
favourable weather.
CATHEDRAL NEWS
Once they have left the nest they do not return and within a few days they start
their journey to southern Africa.
Salisbury Cathedral exhibition Their route is south through France and
Spain crossing at Gibraltar into Africa
A collection of treasures that tell the story of Salisbury Cathedral’s move from Old
Sarum to its present site has been put on display. and then following the west coast and
finally heading inland to arrive at the
The exhibition in the cathedral’s north transept, entitled The Cathedral that Congo Basin in the middle of August.
Moved, is part of a programme of events to mark the 800 anniversary of the From then till early April they move
th
move. around travelling across to Mozambique
on the east coast of Africa and then
The artefacts, from the library and archive, include the papal bull permitting the back to the Congo to feed up ready for
cathedral to move from Old Sarum, a the return flight to the UK in time for the
19-foot list of all the food eaten by the breeding season here.
canon treasurer in the year 1256-57,
and a book from the scriptorium at Old From the time that the young birds leave
Sarum written in the early 1100s, making the nest until they breed when they are
it older than the cathedral itself. 3 years old they are flying continuously
and can do everything on the wing: eat,
The papal bull - or letter - sent by Pope sleep, bathe, mate, and preen.
Honorius III, is bound into the Register of
St Osmund, which contains documents Angie Talbot
from the cathedral’s earliest history,
including the 1091 foundation charter
for the first cathedral at Old Sarum and
a description of the laying of the
present cathedral’s foundation stones
on 28th April 1220. Cathedral archivist Emily Naish with one of the display
cases housing some of the exhibition’s treasures.
The exhibition, curated by cathedral (Picture copyright Katharine Shearing).

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