The Swallow, Hirundo rustica, a symbol of safe return, is a welcomed guest on our porch. Nests have been known to regularly be occupied every summer for more than a decade. The longest recorded nest lasted 48 years. Superstitions and legends include the belief that a barn where a nest was destroyed would cause a cow's milk to dry up, that they got their forked tail because they'd stolen fire to bring to mankind and the gods set their tails alight as punishment. I keep reading that legend says they consoled Christ on the cross, but I can't seem to locate the oldest source of this story.
The swallows have two rounds of younglings a summer and our second batch is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course, being strategically perched so close to the roof, they are hard to get a good picture of until they begin learning to fly. For some reason, the flash going off gets the babies quite excited.
Quando fiam uti chelidon [ut tacere desinam]?
T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland
True hope is swift and flies with swallows' wings.
(Richard III, V.ii.25)
Really, how can you not like a bird that's been referenced from Aristotle through Shakespeare to Eliot?
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