Swallows

Have just spent the last fifteen minutes watching an aerial ballet of a dozen or more swallows, catching small insects, above our garden. It was a dazzling display of skill, making the Red Arrows look like rank amateurs. Often you thought they would collide - air misses all over the place - but they didn't. Sometimes it seemed as though they were almost skimming my head, deliberately, and joyfully, just to demonstrate their own extraordinary deftness. Meanwhile, the multitude of sparrows that throng our hedges at this time of year (hedges = sparrow high rises. Too many people grub them up these days. Sad, sad.) could only look on with what seemed like avian envy!