More Swallows

What is it about this beautiful place that allows me to find nature's treasures? I am sure that it happens at home in England too, but that my ears and eyes are stopped by the roar of modern life.

I spent an hour today watching the swallows. I blogged about them last time and the spectacle is just getting larger. It is as if all the area's swallow population has descended on our small village, hosts and hosts of them. Sometimes they gather on the phonewires, sometimes in the silver birch by the village cross, and then most spectacular of all are the times when they pirouette over the roofs and orchards. This is freeform flying, they dodge and circle, drop and rise. They skim the surface of the village pond, dipping their wings. I have been here three summers and never seen anything like this.

Salamander came to visit me and as we left the village we had to stop the car by the cross to gaze at the swallow hordes. On the side of one house swallows were dotted presumably clinging to the rough plaster, the telephone wires were like the stems of my neighbour's red currants heavy with little black and white birds, while more far more swirled overhead. We went to the village near Salamander's lake house, it felt quite empty, there were only three or four swallows to be seen.

How Little Things Grow

It is strange to come back to the Czech republic after a few weeks away in the UK. Everything has grown, the grass I so carefully scythed is now at least knee deep. The baby swallows, which when I left were still chirruping at their frantic parents from their nests in the barn, every morning now perch on the telephone wires like strings of black and white pearls. A few still have some downy feathers, but all can fly and swoop. I presume they probably can catch flies most of the day, but the telephone wires act as a feeding station in the morning, with the parents diving in and hovering in front of their young one's open beaks.

And then there is Salamander's cat Lilly. A few week's ago I held her easily in my hands, now she is long and lean and quite the little princess. She comes and goes and is absolutely certain that the world revolves around her and she is not wrong. After a false start she seems to have recognised me again, and sucker that I am, I spend a lot of time stroking her and scratching her under her chin. After all what else have I to do with my time?