Swallows feast for long flight south
A SADNESS of swallows in north Leinster, just some scattered sightings, is in marked contrast to transports of delight in south Munster where beleaguered bird parents are feeding clamouring broods on the wing.
In West Cork, many chattering birds on a wire line up with begging beaks as down below, a farmer goes about his milking parlour business at dawn. The younger birds appear to have begun rehearsal in readiness for migration next month.
The endless food source from insect-rousing animals has parent birds stuffing flies into adolescents on ground and wing in a fat build-up for the perilous journey to Africa still weeks away.
But already, third broods may have begun by optimistic parents at some nesting sites.
October, considered the last possible gasp of departure, seems very far off.
September days trigger the urge for going, and once begun, nothing will stop the great migration.
Sometimes one bird will remain at a nest to feed a struggling youngster, sometimes both parents will disappear overnight.
I remember mummified birds in a nest over winter one year and when the returned parents tried to remove the remains the following year, they failed.
They then sealed the nest with fresh mud, entombing their lost family, and built a new nest nearby. This was a moving event to witness.
It was believed for centuries that swallows remained hidden in winter in the mud of ponds and lakes. Samuel Johnson subscribed to such fantasies.
One British newspaper, the Kendal Mercury, reported swallows emerging from bubbles at Grasmere Lake. ‘Fake news’ has been with us for some time!
Even the great naturalist Linnaeus (1707-78) dithered for a time, and the playwright Strinberg was promoting the lake-mud theory in 1907.
This was in spite of an ancient Greek poet Anacreon (6th Century BC) writing: “Gentle swallow, thou we know/ Every year dost come and go/ In the spring thy nest thou makest/ In winter it forsakest/ And diverst’d thyself awhile/ Near the Memphis Towers or Nile.”
Aristotle changed his mind on migration and wrote in his History of Animals that “a great number of birds go into hiding; they do not all migrate; swallows have been found in holes”.
In the Christian era, St Isidore of Seville wrote that swallows “crossed the sea and wintered there”.
And Leonardo da Vinci sketched them for treatises on flight. But there was a doubting Swedish bishop who said seafarers had told him of many dead birds turning up in fishing nets.
Did he not consider they could have died in a storm while migrating?
Every year, 186 bird species (an estimated 5,000m individuals) make the gruelling migration to Africa. Mortality is enormous.
Swallows are day-time travellers, roosting at night at familiar spots during their six-week journey.
Their trip takes them across the Sahara in temperatures of 28-35deg C to the furthest point in sunny South Africa, Cape Province, which each winter becomes home for more than 100,000 Irish-born migrants.