The First Swallow

Horowhenua Chronicle, 1 June 1915, Page 2

The First Swallow

* The first swallow of the year has already been reported in the West ot England, and in a few days' time the forerunners of the main body which nest in our country will be noticed in many districts. We see the first swallow with a peculiar sense of pleasure; lor, unlike the cuckoo or the nightingale, it is almost as domestic a bird during its stay in England as the home keeping robin. The cuckoo is

a "wandering voice." a vagrant which attaches himself to no home; and, though the nightingale often nests in garden shrubberies, it is one of their shyer sojourners. JJut the swallow afiiiust invariably now attaches itself openly at nesting-time to a human homestead; even the house-martin, which builds under the eaves and is itself a kind of swallow, Jias iiot abandoned so generally the old wild haunts among rocks. . The progress of ornithology has thrown a more striking light on the faithfulness of the swallow's return in spring, which gives it a large part of its attraction in our eyes. It Jias ooen provet i (, y t jj e id(?n _ Mcation of marked birds that some of the swallows which return to England farms in April or May spend the win tor as tar away as South Africa. A large part of our regard' for the swallow is due to its combination of -birdlike grace and (speed in their intensest 1 orm with so companionable a familiarity; and in a spring beset with anxiety and pregnant -with the sense of change, the return of the swallow is more than ever welcome. It seems to express' in an unusual degree that stability of nature which is one great source of its attraction and resfreshmeut for human minds; and it brings an untroubled spirit of beauty close home to our human dwellings. Amid the stormy preoccupations ot a critical epoch, the first swallow circling over the April meadows seems a symbol of the permanence of human good. \et it typifies with no less soreness \how changing times necessitate the expression of the good in changing forms. The attachment of the swallow to human edifices has not been maintained without a necessity of adaptation which might well have wrecked it. The name of chimney swallow, now heard less often than of yore, recalls how until the last few generations the bird habitually hung its saucer-like nest to the inside of a wide old-fashioned chimney. It found iu these open recesses the equivalent of the caves ill the rock which were its primitive home, but which in this country it has now almost wholly deserted. When changing fashions of buildings put an end to the old wide chimneys, a less adaptive bird than the swallow might have ,been driven from its association wrfch man. But the pleasant companionship was not severed; and swallows now find in open buildings, such as summer-houses and cowsheds, the shelter once given by the caves, where they probobly first learnt to dwell with primeval men, and later by the old-fashioned chimneys, in ■which Gilbert "White describes them as commonly nesting in his day at Selborne. As we watch with delight the swallows stooping under our garden roofs, the history of their ancient association with our own fortunes seems almost as full of vicissitude as of continuity. The eyes of savage .children Hfust first have loved to trace the swallow's mazes against the patch of sky outside their cave; and presently the swallows migrated with man to his roofed dwellings, maintaining by adaptation of their habits to changed conditions to association which both ancients and moderns have found so grateful. The airy skill of the bird and its sweet companionableiiess remain the same from age to age in spite of its changed surroundings; and in times of change wo need to learn from it the lesson which many find difficult—that the graces of the human spirit need not bo destroyed when they were nested. Though it has abandoned the cave and the chimney, the swallow is still the swallow. London Times.