The arrival of the first swallows is cause for celebration, but we should also think of others making the perilous journey to reach us
Last Wednesday, early evening, the Kent-Sussex border north of Rye. I was driving home under an immoderate sky, the hawthorn around me frothy with blossom, when I saw them. Coming up the slope of the hill in front, they flashed past like thoughts and were gone, but I knew that the year wouldn’t be the same again. As usual, Ted Hughes put it best. “What is loveliest about swallows,” he wrote, “Is the moment they come / The moment they dip in, and are suddenly there.”
Now swallows have arrived and it is as if the year has thrown off its cloak. Roger Deakin, writing of the coming of swallows to his Suffolk home, said that they “seem to bless the house with the spirit of the south; the promise of summer”. Early April is swallow time, the birds’ arrival an annual cause for celebration.
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Source: Guardian Climate Change