SCHOOL’S BACK. Autumn is a-coming in. The year is turning. And I looked to the skies and congratulated myself on a job well done. I counted, because counting is always good, 50-plus. No, not the lowest recorded age of a Daily Telegraph reader, but a celebration of summer. When better to celebrate summer than at its moment of passing?
Because there they were above my house, all 50-plus of them, wheeling and spinning in triumph and fear. Hirundines: swallows and house martins, feeding madly in the overcrowded air, and messing about with huge enthusiasm.
Few birds have a more intimate relationship with human beings than these aeronauts. They fly and feed above our heads; they nest almost exclusively on or in places that human beings have built. My tack-room has been liberally whitewashed: hats, saddles, feed-bins and bridles all liberally bedaubed; a firm straight white line of droppings beneath the beam.
Destroy the nests? I’d as soon burn the buildings down. Swallows have always been welcome visitors. For centuries, barn doors have been left ajar for the comings and goings of swallows, for love of the birds and from a fear that dreadful things would happen to the farm and its produce if a swallow’s nest were harmed.
The martins prefer to nest on the sides of houses, tucked beneath the eaves. Watch them flying low, clearly not swallows — see their natty white bums. They have done better in cities and the suburbs than swallows, even though many a householder is blind to the privilege of playing host to such charming guests, and bribes the windowcleaner to break the law and destroy the nests. For some extraordinary reason, some people find the white trails unsightly. Are we all going mad? Is there anything more capable of making a dwelling sightly than a family of martins?