This dainty creature with long tail feathers, known as "streamers", arrives in Britain in April. It is an insect feeder and hunts its food on the wing, stooping and flickering in elegant flight, the very spirit of summer. It is fond of nesting on a beam inside a building where it constructs a rough cup of dried mud which it lines with feathers. The young, even from a third brood, usually have time to become strong on the wing before they leave us in late autumn to make the long flight to Africa. Swallows ringed in Britain have been found as far south as The Cape. |