As I walked up the track between the two rabbit fields this morning dark clouds were gathering, ending one of the 'sunny intervals' promised by the forecast this morning and replacing it with heavy - and somewhat welcome - rain.
The rain didn't bother the twenty or so swallows and a few house martins dipping and diving across the fields and then coming to rest for a few moments on the galvanised iron barred gates and....
....the tops of the fence posts. I'll remember them here as we plunge into our northern winter. I'll remember their high-pitched screams of excitement; the way they watched me, leaving it daringly late in my approach before they screamed again and took to the skies. I'ii remember how I worried, this autumn, that there have been so few insects - the hover flies seem almost to have disappeared - so few that I worried again about whether these kings of the sky have stocked up with enough food to see them across the Mediterranean and across the Sahara to their second summer of the year, in southern Africa.
I'm sure they were saying goodbye, or adieu, or au revoir. I'm sure they were wishing those of us who are staying behind well through the long winter ahead; as I wish them well in their thousands of miles of the sort of journeying which, in times gone by, we used to so enjoy.
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