Dónal Donohoe

I had been keeping an eye out for sometime wondering when it would happen, then yesterday as I stood in the kitchen beside the window that faces east a bird flew right up to the window paused for a second and flew away again. It was a swallow, the first I’ve seen this year and no doubt his companions will be joining him over the coming days and weeks. Easily to distinguish from most other birds by their agile and graceful flight and a joy to watch on long summer evenings as they swoop down over the field catching insects on the wing. Sociable creatures they love to gather on the telegraph line in the evenings to chatter and do they chatter, I have never heard any other flock of birds that seem to have such lively conversations without actually screaming at each other as crows and rooks do.

© Irene Lundgaard

About two years ago I was sitting reading one summers day with all the windows open when suddenly a swallow flew in one window and started flying around the room unable to find it’s way out again. After circling the room two or three times it collided with the wall and fell to the floor where it remained motionless. I carefully picked it up to bring it outside and as I did so my fingers gently stroked it’s plumage which felt like silk to touch, occasionally the odd bird has fallen down the chimney and needed rescuing in a similar fashion, but none had feathers that were so smooth to the touch. In a strange kind of way just as the swallows are arriving from Africa to spend the summer so it is that the wild geese are gathering to migrate to eastern Greenland and Iceland until the winter, flying in their distinctive V-shaped formations and honking all the while.