‘Come – let’s fly on into the good, rich summer’: my week as a swallow

We are the world’s national bird. And while it’s good to be back here in our British carport, with a roof right over our heads, it was just as good to be back in South Africa for the winter. We are the great cosmopolites of the airways: at home on every continent, even turning up now and then in Antarctica.

Monday

When shall I be as the swallow? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. Quando fiam uti chelidon? A most pertinent question, for we sing as we fly, and our flying is a thing of joy for spectators as well as participants: certainly for us swallows, when we’re twisting and curvetting a foot above a pasture that’s fizzing and buzzing with insects.

Tuesday

Those daft humans didn’t vote for us as Britain’s national bird in 2015, but I bear no grudge. A very wise person talked us up with immense eloquence, but they still went for the robin. Nothing against robins, but to a bird of the world like me it seems a rather parochial choice. Birds, conservation, life: they’re global rather than local issues, aren’t they?

Wednesday

My wife and I are back in the old place, the old nest repaired with a few gobbets of soft mud. I got back first because that’s my job: and when she turned up, joy was unconfined: we flew a firework display of circles and spirals and sigmoid curves. Now the race is on: we’ll get two broods off, if all goes well.

Thursday

Oh humans, humans: I’ll always be grateful to them, despite their limitations and their destructive nature. A bird needs food and a bird needs shelter. Humans cleared forests to create meadows we can hunt over, and they put up all kinds of mad buildings to create places where we build our nests. I won’t hear a word against the species that created the carport – not unless I say it myself.

Friday

Aristotle said that one swallow doesn’t make a spring – but all the same, it’s a bloody good start. Now there are two of us twittering under the carport, and summer can’t be far behind. The days are getting longer, with more and more hours of daylight in which we can look for insects and feed the chicks, when they come. Why stay in Africa and endure those brief equatorial days when you can come north and revel in 18 hours of hunting time? Daylight: that’s what makes a second brood so much more likely. We swallows have calculated the percentages, and we have the wings to make the optimum strategy work.

Saturday

I have to say, the Sahara seems to get wider ever year. And the insects of the air seem a little scarcer. I’m not quite sure why, but my guess is that it’s something to do with the species that makes the carports. But come: let’s fly on into a good, rich summer. Maybe a third brood isn’t totally out of the question.

Swallow CV

Lifespan Maybe four years

Eating habits The aerial buffet

Hobbies Curvetting

Sexual preferences Her in the carport (and maybe her in the barn opposite, when the former isn’t looking)

Photograph by Getty Images