Natural wonders to watch out for this week…

TWHAT TO SPOT SWALLOWS

he last of our swifts left last week. For months, the nightly shrieks of these boomerang birds (which every year fly from Africa to Britain and back again) have filled our suburban garden. The first adults arrived in May to raise their young and since then we have watched them hawking for insects through the skies above.

At its peak last month, dozens of the “Devil’s bird”, as they were once known due to their high-pitch wailing, wheeled above us each night like a kamikaze mobile.

The main departure was a few weeks ago, but a few stragglers remained behind. Now they, too, have gone, back to Sub-Saharan Africa, where they spend nine months of the year, leaving vapour trails of memory in their wake.

And silence – one which in this summer of lockdown is dismal and deafening. After all, the joyous freedom of the swifts represents all that the pandemic has stripped from us. The poet Ted Hughes once wrote of the annual arrival of swifts serving as a reminder that “the globe’s still working”. Their departure, of course, indicates the same. But what of us left behind?

Fortunately, a migratory cousin of the swift remains with us here for another month. Walking in fields near my home in recent days, I have watched swallows zooming low over the grass. They are easily distinguishable from swifts by their red faces and iridescent blue heads, which shimmer in the sunshine, with fork-tails streaming behind.

It has been a tough year for swallows. As they crossed the Aegean in April, many birds were killed in a severe storm. Anecdotally, there have been reduced numbers of swallows around Britain this summer. Even with this Greek tragedy in mind, they remain easy to spot when out in any open countryside. Anywhere, in fact, where there is a ready supply of insects to eat.

There are 860,000 breeding territories where swallows have been recorded in Britain – open pasture and parkland, fields and large ponds are a particular favourite.

The first swallows of the year now arrive in April. Studies by the British Trust for Ornithology have found that these days swallows are arriving from their African migration a full fortnight earlier than in the 1960s and breeding 11 days earlier, too.

Back in the 18th century, the birds tended not to be spotted until June. Naturalists then presumed that migration was a flight of fancy. The birds were thought to hibernate underwater, or hunker down in chimney pots until the warm weather arrived.

Now we know different, although the swallow (like all migrant species) retains many of its own secrets. Come September, a primal instinct sends them on their way. The date of departure is flexible – and weather dependent – though I always think of my wedding anniversary, Sept 16, as the day they go.

When we married in the Yorkshire Dales four years ago, a flock had gathered on telephone wires outside the church, twittering restlessly as they do when they are soon to depart. We hoped the birds might stay for the nuptials but on the morning of the wedding the swallows had gone.

A reminder that one swallow doesn’t make a summer – and nature waits for no one.