Hirundo rustica

The Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica is part of and heralds the good weather in our towns and fields. Insectivorous bird with a fast and acrobatic flight, delicate, graceful and aerodynamic, black in color, with metallic blue reflections above and creamy white underparts. It has a red forehead and throat and a black collar. The wings, long and pointed, show white tones on the lower front part. They build their nests, in the shape of a bowl of salivated mud, placing them on the roofs, beams and projections of houses, attics, stables, sheds and haystacks, where they will raise several broods per season.

Together with the swifts and the house martins, they are par excellence the main emissaries of spring, and despite being dressed in black, they bring us the joy of colors and life that nature exhibits at that time. Currently, with rural deterioration and the abuse of chemical products, we are running out of them in an alarming way. The arrival of these traveling and extraordinarily beneficial birds fills us with optimism and energy, because with them the solstice is at its best. Childhood, along with snacks and a soccer ball, has always been accompanied by that characteristic trisar that they emit when they fly. It is obvious that they have been part of the scenario of our lives since long ago and their disappearance, together with that of other species, is experienced as irreparable.

Times do not seem propitious for sensitivities of this type, especially when globalization and liquid thinking tend to homogenize scenarios and reduce experiences. Neither politics nor the different world blocks that are currently being created, all of them designed in lines of thick paint, have the capacity to attend to the particularity or beauty of each corner of our lives; for this deserves a fine and delicate stroke. However, despite what has been said, we want to think positively and give a vote of confidence to life itself and the regenerative capacity of nature. Everything is in a perfect relationship of symbiosis and its disappearance or decline causes a proliferation of all kinds of insects that have been left without their natural predators.   

A few years ago I photographed the swallows at the entrance to an old shed, using the high speed technique, but this time I went a step further looking for a different image, combining the light from the flashes with the continuous light of some lanterns to create a trail that gave the scene a sense of movement. Now, in the tranquility that summer rest allows us, very close to the start of their migratory routes, we can only watch at sunset the groups of swallows and house martins that, together with the noisy swifts, chase each other describing impossible sinuous orbits in around the old buildings, hoping to see them again next spring, after thousands of kilometers of crossing seas and lands that will continue to challenge them.

Playing your song: