Time to say bon voyage as our summer guests depart

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Scarcely a day has passed since mid-May without a near miss when I enter the small tool shed close to the back of my house. Each time, just at the point of entry, a couple of swallows exit at break-neck speed and miss my forehead by millimetres. Each time I hear the swish of their wings as they make it quite clear that my entry is not particularly welcome.

Their in-built radar means that despite all the close shaves, there is never any collision, but over recent days there has been an increasing giddiness with the swallows in the vicinity of the shed as they begin to get the message that a far bigger journey lies ahead.

Most of their summer adventures around the farm this summer, based on my own observations, have involved reconnaissance missions quite close to ground level, a trait that one of my neighbours insists is always an indication of a bad summer with rain on the way.

There may be some scientific basis to this theory as the birds rely for survival on gathering food along their flight paths. In better weather, the thermals carrying the insects the swallows feed on, tend to be higher in the air, while when low pressure is dominant, the warmer air lies closer to ground level.

Given the coincidence of their low flights and the summer we’ve just endured, there may be some grain of truth in his musings, but over the coming week I expect to see them gathering in their hundreds along the telephone and ESB wires that straddle our countryside.

Since early childhood days, the arrival of the swallows in the lofts and sheds of our farmyard was a thing of celebration, and if here and there, a mischievous cat was athletic enough to go on a murderous rampage, it nearly led to a day of mourning around the kitchen table.

The swallows, or barn swallows to give them their correct title, were always regarded as lucky visitors to the farmyards, heralding the start of summer, and even if they did leave their ‘marks’ on the underlying mowing machines and horse carts, there was never a word of complaint about having to clean off their residues.

They do love their old barns and sheds, with the unguarded window and door openings, that allows the parents to build their nests and gather food for their young in an unhindered flight zone.

During the course of their summer holidays in Ireland, swallows will often have three to four broods of young, with four or five eggs laid each time, incubating over a period of about two and a half weeks.

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