On a wing and a prayer

SPRING is finally here and, all over Britain, people are eagerly awaiting the return of the swallows. To get here, the birds must travel 6,000 miles, from the tip of southern Africa, over the tropics and the Equator, the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean, until they finally cross the English Channel to reach our shores. Then, in one of those mysteries of Nature that baffle and amaze in equal measure, they will return to the very place where they were born.

We are not the only people awaiting the swallow’s arrival. All the way across the northern hemisphere, from Alaska in the west to Japan in the east, people are eagerly scanning the spring skies, hoping to see the first of the millions of swallows that spend the summer in our northerly latitudes, before they head