Swallows
 

The other morning I was sitting in our living room looking out the front window at a bright blue sky checking the weather when I noticed what appeared to be several delta winged jets performing acrobats just above the horizon in the south sky. I quickly turned on my electric wheelchair and wheeled out onto our deck so as to have a clearer view. After settling into a nice sunny spot I noticed that the jets were not jets at all but barn swallows just playing tag and doing a number of impossible aerial maneuvers. 

            They seemed to be involved in a kind of “follow the leader” game but the leader was doing things that can’t be done by anything in nature or designed by man.  For instance it would do a perfect loop but when coming out at the bottom of the loop it would fly upwards in a corkscrew path and when reaching the top would execute a perfect snap roll and repeat the procedure, an impossible maneuver.

            I was a bit surprised to see barn swallows for they usually are nearer water where they take mud and mix it with salvia and then like master masons build their nests.  Like all swallows, barn swallows have deeply forked tails.  Barn swallows have orange chests and purple wings and usually nest under the eves of barns or sometimes inside along the timbers just under the roofs.  They are often confused with their cousins the cliff swallows.

I was surprised but delighted to find barn swallows among the mountain shadows and could not help but smile as they darted around and through the branches our oak trees.

            Ah yes indeed, the joys of living within the mountain shadows are truly unmatched anywhere.