Swifts

The Hawthorn and The Swift: You Have to Smile

It’s a summer Sunday morning and you’re on the road in South-East Limerick. From your passenger seat you watch the blossoming hawthorn ribbon the countryside. There’s a cycling charity event on the road and the going is slow, so you have time to enjoy the undulating view. Hawthorn enfolding fields all shapes and sizes – good land, middling land, fallow and scrub. Draping the livestock in the promise of a summer of plenty, a promise older even than the old promise of hurling’s plenty.

The Swallows are here

I came out of the café and looked to my right, and there she was: the first swallow of the summer. The unmistakable forked tail streaming below the wire, the pale breast, tawny in the soft morning light, the hint of cobalt and burnt orange. Her mate flew by and she rose in a sweep and they both entered the open door of the barn. The swallows are here!