This swallow has spent much of today flying around our house calling, then landing on the telephone wires and calling again, as if it's looking for something. It's very focused on this, not worrying when I went indoors to collect the camera and then approached until I was right underneath it. It just wanted to call, call, call....
I haven't been able to clarify whether, at the end of each breeding season, a swallow pair fly south together and then return together, or whether they 'arrange' to meet back at last year's nest site, but such information as I can glean suggests that neither of these happens but that the males return first and set up a territory to which they try to attract a female as they arrive. So it's quite likely that our chatty swallow was a male and was doing just that.
The return of our Hirundininae - that is, the swallow family which, for us, includes the barn swallow, the house and sand martins, and the swift - is a very special event. I do hope that we have a good number return this year but this journey, in our changing world, must be more perilous each year.
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