Sunday 29 May 2011

5 little swallows sitting in the porch


I can't open the kitchen door but will have to sometime soon.
"It’s a shaky time when chicks first leave the nest but all part of the natural process when they learn to survive on their own." RSPB

Five, beautiful baby swallows are sitting on the metal angles that support the glass French verandah above the entrance door. These are not my favourite architectural inventions but they do keep the rain and snow from falling immediately outside the door. I am over at Angles sur L'Anglin and seemingly a temporary prisoner in my own home. Mummy and daddy swallow re-appear very frequently, to swoop at a fledgling and feed it. Sometimes they hover over one gaping mouth as if to feed it but then suddenly choose another.  There is a pecking order. The stronger bird seems to get fed more and is getting stronger more quickly!  Such is life!

The meteo for this region says 25 degrees Celsius but it feels hotter than that. The rear garden is incredibly hot. I have had to retreat indoors.  Thinking about doing all the jobs that need to be done is too much and I have succumbed to laziness and creative writing.

I was only sitting in the shade in the rocking chair that does not rock a lot when I became quite hot and flustered. I am drinking copious quantities of tea. Cold, black or green tea is delicious. The concert of birds in the back garden is good listening material. Hoopoe was seen to fly from 7 o'clock to 1 o'clock diagonally across the garden. Blackbirds, Black redstarts, sparrows, chaffinch, pigeons, doves, rooks are all content.

I decided to go to my car and find the camera but I couldn't locate it which is a pity. As I exited the door below the baby swallows, some fledglings flew away.  I felt very bad. But then they returned and I don't like to go out again and disturb their mealtime.

3 comments:

GaynorB said...

A great description of your afternoon.

It was hot here in LeP-P too. We needed to clean off and seal the terrace - just the best start to a holiday!

Luckily it was too hot to seal in the mid afternoon (saved by the sun!)so we retreated inside to watch the Monaco GP, followed by a walk.

Sweetpea in France said...

Thank you.
Enjoy the wonderful weather but it is worrying for the farmers and it will be worrying when the price of food increases.
My 6 tomato plants perished in the heat and I daren't put the replacements out until we get more than a trickle of rain which we had today.

bowiechick said...

When we had the Bowie, we used to get the mud swallows nesting up under the eves of the port and starboard breezeways. Every spring we'd delight in their arrival again for they were great fun to watch. Of course if you stood at all close to their nest they'd dive bomb you but eventually, they got used to us. I think the most wonderful memory of the swallows was when Greig had ripped out the port wall on the main salon and it was all open to the river. It happened to coincided with the beginning of flight school and he managed to nab a picture of them lined up two by two in formation, just like the do on the real battleships. I'll have to dig out that post somewhere. Yay to summer!