Wuff with the Smooth: Swallows and Amazons

Swallows have taken to sitting inside our porch at the backdoor, chirping and shrilling and chattering – broadcasting with a surprising volume for creatures so small.

Some mornings I find myself standing in the kitchen, mug of tea in hand, leaning towards the window so that I can watch their antics. Up close they appear somehow larger than they should be, sleek and regal in their demeanour, with that scarf of red at their throats and those tails reminiscent of an old fashioned suit.

Strangely enough, the back door is rarely used by the house’s human inhabitants, which perhaps explains why the migratory beauties have assumed their squatting rights. With little to no human traffic, they come and go as they please, flitting in and out and in and out again. So far I am only surprised that no nests have been started within the porch’s awning, although there’s plenty of crap, right enough. Along the miniscule concrete ledge above the door, down the side wall and on the step, it has the appearance of avian graffiti.

Seeing as how we rarely use the back door, the presence of this guano could have been the give-away for the swallows’ presence however that was not the case – oh, no.

The Devlin household’s very own private security contractor sounded the alarm as soon as the swallows first touched down underneath the porch. Other people have doorbell cameras or motion sensor lights or CCTV installations. We have Waffle.

No sooner had the shrilling began but the Hairy Fool sounded the alarm – an alarm which, given its volume and ferocity, wouldn’t have been out of place in a nuclear power plant.

“It’s just swallows, dog,” I told him. “They’re supposed to be lucky.” But I might as well have been talking to, well… the dog.

Waffle whined as if he neither believed nor accepted my pan-faced explanation. The whine suggested, “This is really messed up, bro. Those feathery buggers are freaking me out with their whinging. Also, and you mightn’t have noticed this, they’re crapping all over the place outside – it’s a whole hot hanlin of a mess. Someone could slip on that crap or, God forbid, eat it.”

Personally, I like the fact that the swallows have taken up residence under the porch and I will happily clean up after them, if that’s what it takes to stop the Hairy Fool from eating their scat.

Swallows are amazing little birds and it feels like a real privilege to see them in up close and personal. Within the whirl of modern life’s too-ing and fro-ing, they are a reliable constant and they remind me too of the turning of the seasons. No matter what madness the world throws at you (we’re looking at you, Waffle), you can always count on the long-tailed peripatetic travellers to appear in the sky around the end of April. They don’t care about wars or megalomaniac oligarchs feathering nests so big they’ll never need them. They only care about catering for their families. I can relate to that. They eat flies too, which is always a bonus in my book.

For weeks now, the swallows have been chirping at the back porch and for weeks, Waffle has been ill-at-ease. He has always had a penchant for chasing the blackbird on the lawn and he has no love for the two collared doves in the alders but the swallows, he hates.

This is most notable if we happen to be sitting outside on a calm evening and one or more of the birds fly in under the porch. Correspondingly, Waffle will spring to his feet and run barking into the porch, hopping up at the swallows as if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that he’ll catch one. All he ever achieves is scaring them away from the porch – which is exactly what I don’t want.

Still, try as I might to dissuade the Hairy Fool from his alarmist tendencies, he never listens.

The biggest downside is that, when the swallows finally decide they’ve had enough of our mercurial weather and ship out for warmer climes, Waffle will think he’s won.

No doubt he’ll whine as if to say, “I showed them the craic, bro. They thought they could just land over here uninvited and steal all our flies and harass our women folk. They’re probably just came to claim benefits and indulge in criminality.”

And yet, as bumbling and foolish as Waffle is, even he wouldn’t think something so idiotically xenophobic.

He and I will leave that tack to the oligarchs and the easily led.