"Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther
Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.
Swereee swereee. Another. And another.
It's the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs."
'Swifts' by Anne Stevenson
Swifts being one the favourite birds of poets (they're seasonal, loud, fast, have plenty of character and look like punctuation marks in the sky) I was surprised not to be able to unearth any instructions on how to make one out of origami. After all, poets use paper too. Paper, plus love of swifts, equals origami swifts. What am I missing here? Anyhow, you'll be pleased to hear that even a rank amateur like me can work out how to make one, and that it's relatively easy as origami birds go.
You'll need a square piece of paper. I've picked charcoal grey with a hint of brown - might make the photography a little hard to follow, but it's suitably swifty.
Step 1. The classic square base. Mountain-fold the paper in half both horizontally and vertically, as in the left photo. Then valley-fold the paper across its diagonals, as in the right photo.
Step 2. Gently fold all the points down to meet at the bottom. The paper should quite easily collapse into a smaller square (or diamond-shape, for the purposes of illustration).
Step 3. Now the usual bird base. On one side of the diamond only, fold the left and right points into the middle and back out again. Now fold the top down and back out so that you leave the impression of an upside-down triangle in the center. Both these measures will make the next step much easier.
Step 4. Now pick up the first layer of the bottom-most point and bring it all the way up to beyond the top, in such a way so that the sides close in.
Step 5. Do the same to the other side of the diamond, and then fold it in half, like so. (I have no idea what I did to the camera here).
Step 6. Turn the half-diamond upside down so that you have two pieces at the top (these will become the wings) and one thicker piece at the bottom. Then pick up the bottom point - just the outer layer - and reverse fold it into the illustrated position. You effectively need to turn it inside out, so that it looks the same on both sides. Note the angle!
Step 7. You should be able to see a little bit of the second layer jutting out from under the latest fold. Reverse fold that small point so that it joins the top layer in being angled backward.
