Swallows

The swallows are still raising a brood in the garage. They're very noisy. As their cohorts sing on the wires outside, the nesting birds sing from inside the dark, corrugated iron structure. They are in a frenzy, a kind of urgent ecstasy - we are going, we are going, hurry, hurry, it is starting...

One brood fledged a few days ago. We always know, because generally one or two of them at some point will fly into the French windows. When other kinds of birds do this, which is happily quite rare, it is often with a heavy thwack, so that they fall stunned to the ground or flutter off disoriented, but the swallows seem to do it lightly, bounce off and continue their flight untroubled.

Sometimes we have a house sparrow come down the chimney, usually a young one. We had some mesh put around the vent to prevent this, but it must have a gap, as they still get through now and then. The fireplace has glass doors; I hear them on their way down, then moments later see them fluttering in the hearth. We open the door and window to outside, then open the fire doors, and when the bird sees the daylight, it usually flies straight out, scattering a bit of ash and soot around the room on the way. Once, before the mesh, we had a starling down, very fierce and strong and angry.

On Sunday morning, I heard the telltale palpitations from higher up the flue, but no bird appeared, and I gave up waiting for it. Several hours later, there was a bird in the hearth, though I had difficulty seeing it. We opened the door and windows, then Tom opened the fireplace doors, and a swallow darted out.

It hovered about the ceiling; its initial impulse seemed to be to fly upward. We stood astonished, hands raised, holding our breath. It perched a moment or two on top of the door, as if considering its position, then it wheeled round the room and out of the window. We turned to each other, wide-eyed and smiling; we felt as if we had been granted a visitation.

The trip to Africa is, probably for most of them, a death sentence. It seems wasteful of energy for the birds to breed so late, so that both young and parents are weakened before they even start. And though they seem to survive unscathed, even the shock of colliding with a window or spending several hours down a chimney may ultimately prove fatal. Yet nature doesn't care much to husband the strength and energy of the individual, but is profligate, or generous, given the chance, as well as cruel. A weakened surplus serves to feed other species, though it's hard to see how these tiny starved corpses, drying out and blowing away as dust in the winds of the Sahara, nourish anything, except perhaps a melancholy human imagination.

We were talking about some foxes we'd seen, and our friend E said, rather wishfully, "I think they have a happy life, those wild animals, living naturally like that..."



No, I demurred, no wild creature has a happy life. Fear, hunger, pain, parasites are all a normal part of their existence; predators may be a little better off than prey, but not much. But, then again, neither do they think about whether they have a happy life or not. Happiness, as such, like profligacy, generosity, or cruelty, is the preserve of human beings, and perhaps their neotonised and dependent attendant species.

And yet, and yet. Without that unclear concept and uncertain blessing called consciousness, it seems to me that birds at least do experience, if only as the other side of fear and pain, a fierce and unalloyed joy, which has nothing to do with happiness, or what the past has visited on them, or what the future holds. And for me, when I watch them, momentarily they have the power to lift me out of the clinging to happiness, and the fear of losing it, which is part of my human lot.

Bon voyage, swallows!