Swallows and Swifts make the summer

I look forward to seeing my first swallow of the year.  Usually in the London area they arrive around the 15th April – an astonishing feat of punctuality when you consider the vast distance they travel. Some however get it wrong; I once saw a single bird hawking over Connaught Water in Epping Forest in thick March snow, and wondered if swallows mightn’t be better off if they had evolved the ability to hibernate as people once believed they did, in the mud at the bottom of lakes.

They’ve been around the south of England for over a month now, the screeching daredevil Swifts arriving not long after. In truth it is swifts we see most often in my part of London – exhilarating and rowdy they mob and scatter between the house roofs, impossible to catch on film, for me at least. And to tell the truth I don’t even try, the clue to the pleasure of watching swifts is in the name.

Once I was lucky enough to be doing a bit of work on a local nature reserve when a gigantic mixed flock of swallows and martins swooped in and wheeled and twittered in their thousands over the water – the site comprises grassland and a disused reservoir. It was exhilarating, beautiful and it was my first day there – in my eagerness, I’d turned up early. I thought that every day would start like this. When the ranger arrived he told me I’d been lucky, because I’d actually seen the birds arrival from Africa – it was indeed April 15th.

Last September when camped on the Isles of Scilly, we watched the swallows in their restless gathering as they prepare for the gruelling journey back to Africa. Sitting on a hot deserted beach on the tiny island of Gugh, we watched as twenty or more arrowed back and forth across the sand just a few inches above the ground, effortlessly changing course over stationary and moving obstacles as they hawked for sand flies. I aimed my camera at them as they flashed past and caught nothing but blurs, but then again, sharpness isn’t the point. Frozen perfection would never get across how it felt to watch these mercurial creatures.

To read more Nature Notes, why not visit Rambling Woods – in fact, why not write a Nature Notes post of your own?

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Brilliant Aether & Always Coming Home

So what’s been keeping me busy these days, so busy that I’ve neglected this blog horrendously and my blogging friends even more than usual? Well, I’ve been frantically making new stock, but I’m always doing that.  The truth is, I’ve also been building another website, and it’s just recently gone “live”.

Brilliant Aether is going to be a bit of a departure from The Birds In The Meadow, but I like to think the two sites will complement each other nicely.  There’s been an element to my creativity that’s gone unexpressed here – the part that loves living in a city, that wants to run with ideas that would not fit on a nature blog, and wants to make things to sell that would be out of place in The Birds In The Meadow’s shop. For instance, there’s been a Steampunk section in The Birds In The Meadow ever since it opened and it’s been one of the most popular sections in the shop, but to fully explore the more fantastical and costume like aspects of my craft I really have to take it elsewhere; thus the Brilliant Aether shop was born. There isn’t a huge amount of stock just yet and the blog has barely started but I hope it’s going to gather momentum nicely. And I’d love it if you dropped in and said hi!

The Birds In The Meadow may have been a little slower than usual while I worked on the new site, but the making never stopped and the arrival of summer (a chilly summer, but summer nonetheless) galvanised me to make some new summery stuff. I’ve been hanging on to a pair of absolutely gorgeous vintage clip on earrings for a while now and I’ve wanted to give them a new life as cocktail rings but the right ring backs just never came my way. Until now that is, and here’s what they look like now (excuse my horrid dishpan hand)

The arrival of swallows after their gruelling migration from Africa a month ago filled me as ever with happiness and awe… so much better than shock and awe, don’t you think? I have a whole blog post to write about that in fact… but not now.  To celebrate I made these necklaces; I called them “Always Coming Home”  after the book by Ursula K LeGuin…

…and to celebrate the first rose appearing in our front yard, I made this necklace

And there is more to come! But not now, as I think you’ve probably had enough to read as it is, so I’ll thank you for reading this far down and take my leave.

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