Swallows landing and other peculiarities

 

Swallows.

I guess that makes it official then: summer’s here.

Yesterday morning I was basking in the sun on a park bench after taking a dip in a lake. I had set up the bench right up to the waterline for easy toe cleaning – clever, I know – and to catch all those lovely rays ricocheting from the water’s surface.

That’s my version of a tanning bed. 

After some reading, pondering and people watching, it was time for a swim. A guy – who was rowing his boat pass me – commented something about the water temps and then something more still, but I didn’t catch what it was since I was already well underwater and diving… and kept on diving further away from the shore. 

When I finally re-emerged and grasped for air, I said pardon, and we exchanged pleasantries for a while. He reckoned it must be quite warm by now, and right he was.

Then again, I swim outdoors year-round, so what do I know. Been doing this same routine ever since ice melted away and I could finally start using this beach locality which is much closer by.

It was already pretty amazing only this time particularly so because it was the first day that I really had a good look at a flock of swallows that kept gliding and lunging back and forth all around me.

It was probably on a weekend when I was quite sure I had heard a swallow sing since, well, last summer. I was busy writing something so I didn’t feel like going out to the balcony and actually try to spot one or two.

I decided to trust my ears and just made a quick mental note to myself to check it out later. And I guess I did see a few swallows far in the horizon, though, some evening when I was looking out the window. I’ve started to do that a lot recently for some reason. Just looking. Watching. Anything really.

Then what was truly magical was me seeing first one, then a few  more swallows to actually land just a few meters in front of me. It didn’t look like they were doing much while on the ground, though. Just sorta standing still. I guess it’s a chore for them to move about on the ground, so they just, well, sit still and look awkward.

When I had taken another break from reading, before actually seeing those swallows landing, I saw a lot of insects buzzing behind me, above the grass, so I took that these swallows had a pretty decent chance at a good feast that morning.

Maybe some of those guys and/or gals who decided to land just ate a bit too much for their own good and needed a short break. :)

”Du-de, I swear, just one more and I won’t be able to fly at all. Just need a quick breather here. Don’t worry, bro, just a mellow minute and then I’m good to go again.”

Other swallows flew by as well, multiple times in fact it seemed, but didn’t land, so I took that as a sign that landing is probably something they usually tend to avoid as much as possible.

But I had already been there for a good while – more like hours in fact – so they probably thought I was dead or at least dying and would pose no real danger to them should they decide to land – in celebration of the summer for all I knew.

Well, I was frying fast, so they weren’t far off the mark in their joint risk analyses. 

 And maybe because them landing is such a rare occasion they simply tend to suck at it altogether. I guess the ones who managed to land, were natural talents, or those who didn’t were just n00bs – straight from the last year’s batch.

”Yo, Bil-lie, why dontcha come down so we can talk?” And then they burst into hearty and more than little mischievous laughter. Bastards.

Those reckless swallows never grow up, do they? Yet they are not as crazy as their cousins, swifts, who actually sleep – and mate, too! – in mid-air.

I guess your doctor wouldn’t recommend trying any of that. But I – for one – sure wonder what it would be like. Because it just doesn’t make any sense. None at all.

For me those birds are, for lack of a better description, otherwordly: some entities not quite out of this world you and me reside in.

 

***

 

A breath of fresh air.

Last week I witnessed something even more bizarre. In a good, magical, sense of course.

I was finishing my lunch when I was looking out the windows, these huge wall-to-ceiling panorama style windows, when I noticed this strange phenomenon.

I didn’t remember it at first but I had actually seen that happen before – on the very same spot. More than five years ago, tough.

The place where I was dining has a few tables outdoors as well – when it’s warm enough – and it just happens to be in a spot where the winds blow right from the lakeside and they sort of a have nowhere to go when they reach that nook of the said building.

And as a result it tends to creative this almost magical vortex where sudden gusts of wind start juggling napkins and whatever else they can get a hold of and carry on wayward for what sometimes can seem like it’s never going to stop at all.

So, every time this unfortunate girl was trying to get her napkin back, it decided to take another round still, and another, and then a few more. More and more people joined the laughing choir, not believing their eyes that something like that could really go on for that long.

That is until finally some courteous young man – a party-pooper I’d rather call him – managed to steal the napkin from the air and hand it over to her.

The show was over and everyone went back to their boring, menial, lives. Myself including. But I had remembered that, so I decided I wanted always to remember that. And by writing about it, I think I shall.

The incident was like a nature’s reminder: ”If you folks think that you can bug me any way you like, you ain’t seen nothing yet! That was just kids’ play. The ways I can bug you, brothers and sisters, oh no, you don’t EVER wanna see that – amigos.”