A wireless age will silence our swallows’ song
sir – Roger Keeble’s question about where swallows perched before the existence of phone wires (Letters, September 5) will be answered when everything is wireless.
What we will miss is the tunes that swallows unwittingly create on the wires as they randomly alight on them. Try humming them – sometimes it works.
Alan Stevens
Holt, Norfolk
sir – To those inquiring about the behaviour of swallows before the advent of barns, houses and telephone wires, I offer this: before houses they nested on cliffs.
As for their pre-migration muster, a trip at dusk to a large reedbed, such as the one at the eastern end of Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire, will reveal tens of thousands of swallows roosting for the night. Occasionally a hobby will swoop among them hoping to catch a light supper.
Alan G Barstow
Onslunda, Skåne, Sweden
sir – How lucky Roger Keeble is to witness the swallows gathering; numbers are much depleted in South Yorkshire.
Mr Keeble will find an answer to his letter in Gilbert White’s book, The Natural History of Selborne (1789). White writes: “Before they depart [swallows]… forsake houses and chimneys, and roost in trees.” Lillias Bendell
Sheffield, South Yorkshire