There’s sense to be found in nature’s symmetry!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

The swallows are still here, but not for long. They’re waiting for the right wind to blow and carry them away towards Africa. I wonder which way they’ll go: south, across the widest part of the English Channel to northern France; south west, towards the Bay of Biscay; or south east over Wales and England, where they’d be able to stop off for a feed and a rest?

Whether the wind that carries them away from me is a north-westerly, north easterly or pure northerly, as they leave for their epic journey the weather they’ll leave behind them will have an Autumnal nip in it. The arrival and departure of these beautiful and entertaining birds define my seasons.

This year we had that long cold Spring, when the north wind blew for so long it felt as if it might never stop. Those clear cold April night skies left a heavy dew blanketing the ground each morning, providing enough water to germinate seeds, yet the freezing air then left those sorry seedlings clinging to life, only daring to raise their tiny leaves a mere millimetre above the dry cracked earth.

As if to reinforce my strong belief in the tenacity of nature, they defied the sub-Arctic temperatures and lack of water to survive, dormant in suspended animation, unable to develop roots or foliage.

During that sunny yet uncomfortably long cold Spring, I stood outside my house, looking to the skies. Where were the swallows? Were they not coming this year? Had they been stopped in their migratory tracks by the brutal northerly wind spinning off the blocking high pressure zone?

Maybe they’d become exhausted by their journey from Africa, and settled in West Cork or Normandy, deciding that County Galway was just too far. Why on earth would they choose to battle that blood-freezing wind, when they didn’t have to? I’m sure they’d find midges to eat in Wexford.

The answer to my question was revealed in a most splendid way. When finally the wind changed, sending a very welcome warm breeze up from the south, the damson flies of Lough Corrib launched into a massive hatch. The air around my house was thick with them, churning themselves into blurry tornados of crazed aerial insect orgies.

My friend, the Artist formerly known as Snarly, happens to be an excellent and very knowledgeable fly fisherman, and he explained to me how these barrel-shaped clouds of flies were actually thousands of females, while the male would fly through the centre of the mêlée, inseminating as many of the ladies as he could manage on his merry marital way.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.