I have always liked swallows. They were constant companions from late spring through fall in our village, nesting in corners under the barn roofs, often in large numbers. Barn swallows are quite social, attack in groups, if they feel their mud abodes are threatened, and they sing their heart out to attract a mate. They swoop and fly fast, doing all kinds of acrobatic maneuvers to catch the insects that they feed on while in the air, with unending chirpy commentary. Mating up there as well, must be a fleeting pleasure.

The old lore of “when swallows fly high, the weather will be dry,” lost its magical prediction power when my scientist father explained to me, early on, that of course swallows change the level at which they fly depending on weather, if you think where their food source will be: when it’s warm, outside thermal activity carries bubbles of air up and with it the insects that swallows hunt. Convection is even stronger near heated surfaces of sunlit buildings. If it rains or colder weather brings winds, the insects seek shelter under trees and bushes, with the swallows following in lower swoops.

Well, magic could still be had elsewhere. One of my favorite fairy tale books of Hans Christian Andersen tales had color plates depicting an old fashioned Thumbelina flying South to a warm, sunny, fairy tale land on the back of her rescuer, a neon-blue swallow, only to meet a prince her size and live happily ever after. Things had seemed pretty hopeless after having been abducted and given in service or forced marriage to all kinds of threatening creatures, but hey, swallow to the rescue. I longed more for the trip than the prince, all of age what, 6 or 7?

The tales containing swallows changed over time, becoming much darker when reading turned from fairy tales to Greek mythology. Remember the myth of two sisters, Philomela and Procne? Procne was married to King Tereus, a political alliance forced by her father, an Athenian king. Tereus coveted her sister, raped her and cut her tongue out so she could not tell. She managed to put the story into her weavings which were sent to her sister. The two sought revenge, unwilling to let the crime and the silencing of female voices stand – something that impressed me tremendously as a teenager, even though it included infanticide of the king’s son with Procne, and feeding Tereus the child, unbeknownst to him. The glimpse of justice served by two strong women refusing to be victims almost made up for having to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses.…

When Tereus tries to persecute the sisters, they ask the Gods for help and are changed into a nightingale (Philomela) and a swallow (Procne) respectively, voices forever heard in beautiful song. (Never mind that female nightingales in real life are mute, and it is the males who sing.) The sisters avenge the assault and regain their honor and freedom, much in contrast to so many others in Greek mythology who share the female fate and get punished on top of it (just think Medusa!) Then again, it is ravaging Gods in most other cases, who get away with it, while Tereus was a mere mortal – maybe those will be punished after all. Or will they?

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In North America you mostly see tree swallows, migratory birds that come back every spring. They are amazing aerialists and they are some of the migratory birds most affected by climate change. Shifts in temperature and amount of rainfall since the 1970s have led to breeding patterns that have been catastrophic. Due to warmer winters, eggs are laid earlier, but then the critical period for babies’ weight gain falls into time windows where there are not enough insects to go around to feed them because of excessive spring rains. Not only has the insect population itself steadily declined, but insects hide when it is wet and cool, and the swallow parents stop going to the nesting sites for days on end since they can’t find food. Often it is too late for the fledglings who die of starvation and hypothermia before better weather resumes.

One way to combat that is, of course, to increase insect availability. That means creating more wetlands, no spraying with pesticides, and allowing weeds to grow that really attract insect populations. Dandelions are among the ones that really help fight the insect decline and yet they’ve become scarcer and scarcer due to overeager gardeners and farmers waging war on them (yours truly included before I learned this.) Let them bloom!

In any case, when I see and hear swallows it makes me happy, it makes me think back to the fascination they have obviously held for many across centuries, to the fact how they were integrated into the literary arts. It makes me want to document their beauty to get us all more engaged in trying to do what’s right for the environment.

You can have the chattering of swallows by Janacek.

the song of the nightingale by Stravinsky

or some very sad birds by Ravel, if we don’t get our act together.