Swallows return

“The wagtail waited patiently…then led me onwards again, offering promising poses on fencepost and boulder but eluding the lens


"Most effectively”

Country sights and sounds
John Shelley

WE HAVE our swallows back with us again, at last. They arrived on April 12, which seems to be the standard date for them. I wonder how they know. I did hear some reliable reports of a few a week earlier, and these only a few miles from here. It is these two pairs sweeping up and down the yard that I am glad to see, and somehow they seem equally glad to be here. What is the collective name for swallows? It should be a celebration, or a festival.
Other early sightings turned out to be sand martins. These always precede the swallows by a few days, and as the two species exhibit similar types of early-season behaviour, it can sometimes be difficult to rightly determine which is which.
Are these the same four swallows that came to stay with us last year? We could arrange to have numbered rings placed on their legs and keep track of them that way, but why should we encumber them so? No matter, they are here, and it appears they have brought the sun with them.
Other birds have also made the long journey from their winter quarters. When I went out to meet some of them, I found the scrub brimming with birdsong. From the tall willows came the cascading notes of the wood warbler, and from the blackthorn thicket the more concise if somewhat repetitious two-toned tune of its relative the chiff-chaff.
Reed buntings, black-cowled monks of birds, were flitting between last year’s dead reeds and streamside bushes, male and female playing chase. I watched their antics and saw the consummation of their courtship, a brief, two-second affair in which the female dropped her wings and lowered her head, inviting her mate to mount her. With their business done, the two chased away to hunt insects together as if nothing had happened.
Again I met the grey wagtail and followed its bobbing tail and cheerful cry along the stream; it led me into a quandary. ‘Look, look!’ it seemed to call, and there in the shallow tail of a long, slow pool, just where the water sped up before tipping musically down a rocky step to the shallows beyond, a trout swept back and forth in the current, making occasional splashes at it fed at the surface.
I was suitably armed (it is a difficult thing to go to the river without the fly rod; it is a wand, a gift and a curse together). With the bird just out of camera range and the trout within an easy cast, I tussled bravely. The trout won my attention. I got it on the first cast. It soared easily through its own element to gulp down my clumsily tied artificial fly and soon came thrashing ashore. At a little over a pound, it was not a great fish in the world of trout, but for this small stream a trophy. I took it home for lunch.
The wagtail waited patiently until I was finished, then led me onwards again, offering promising poses on fencepost and boulder but eluding the lens most effectively. I got it in the end, but as always I found my success extremely limited. The camera caught the shape of the bird but none of its character and only a much-muted rendition of its sunny plumage. Looking at the image later I tried to imagine that hurried call, the vitality that is its existence, that ever onward merry dance with which it fills its days, but was unable.
It is the life of the bird that makes it what it is. The picture is still and cold, telling nothing of the bold splash of colour that comes bobbing through the day. I shall have to go back.
Every year the wagtails nest beneath the arch of the old stone bridge a short distance upstream. Previous nests are contained within almost every sizable gap in the stonework. The bridge offers the benefit of safety from predators, though a successful first flight is essential if the fledglings are to survive and not tumble into the rushing current below. Last year a pair of swallows built their nest within ten feet of the wagtails, one of the few times I have known them to nest away from human habitation. Jealousy stirs within, to think that my swallows might not want my shed.