Gardening
Wildlife watch
The Swallow
The writer and photographer, David Chapman, introduces us to this beautiful summer house guest
If you have a large garden which borders onto open country then there is a good chance that you will have swallows. If, also, you have a large shed, car port or even just an open porch then you might also be lucky enough to have them nest on your property.
Swallows habitually nest inside buildings; they make their cup-shaped nest by collecting beaks full of mud and tying the layers of their nest together with strands of dried grass. Inside this they make a lining of feathers before laying between three and five eggs.
The swallow is a beautiful bird; it has a graceful profile with long tail streamers, sleek body and pointed wings. The birds with the longer tail streamers are males. In flight you could be forgiven for thinking that the swallow is simply a black and white bird but no, the black is a shimmer of gun metal blue and the swallow has a lovely chestnut red throat patch and forehead.
Having returned to Britain in April most swallows will now have a clutch of eggs to incubate but it won’t be long before these eggs have hatched. Then the parents will be faced with several demanding mouths to feed before the young birds are ready to leave the nest.
The treacherous lifestyle of the swallow, involving an annual migration across two continents, means that the parents will need to raise as many young as possible so they will have a second and maybe even a third brood before heading back to Africa in the autumn.
People sometimes confuse the swallow with the house martin which has stubby wings and tail as well as a noticeable white rump which shows from above and below. Like the swallow, the nest of the house martin is made from mud but it is always on the outside of the house usually under the eaves.
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Reader comments
I wait anxiously every year for the return of my swallows. I live in Old School, on Anglesey, with several outbuildings and have an average of 11 nests a year with 2 broods in each, as a rule. For 5 out of the last 8 years they have arrived back home on the 19th of April - how amazing is that? This year they were a little early, arriving from the 15th to the 18th. Two years ago they had me worried as none had appeared. Between the 27th of April and the 2nd of May they arrived, obviously thin and quite exhausted. When they leave, late September/ early October I alwys know when they are going. They have several 'practice runs' with neighbouring swallows. Then the evening arrives, all twittering and swooping they mass high in the sky and head east as the sun sets. I have tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat as I watch them take off on the tortuous jorney they face. I pray that I will see them again next April. They bring me so much pleasure as I watch them playing in the late evening sun and teaching the little ones to fly. If you haven't got swallows you have missed a little bit of heaven.
Posted by: Christine Davies | 05/06/2008 17:51:57
