A Single Swallow Read Online Free Page B

one of the rangers. ‘They come here later.’
    Of course, it was mid-morning: insects; hunting. Reeds and roosting are for evening. We returned to the hire car and drove in circles, nosing the unobtrusive little vehicle through a strange, angular world of water, fenced-off settlements and tall trees until we are possibly lost, definitely lost, and then probably on track.
    CAPE FLATS WATER TREATMENT WORKS
NO ENTRY
    We play our joker again. We have done it before, using the car park and lavatories of the Victoria Hotel in town, because we were white or because our colour gave us confidence, though we did sneak out like thieves, and now, penetrating one set of gates after another because we are birdwatchers and birdwatchers can do this.
    â€˜There – swallow!’ I shout.
    â€˜Is it?’
    â€˜Yes, look . . .’
    â€˜Oh so it is – phew.’
    They were there for a second, skimming alongside us, between a high bank and the car. We follow the road to another set of gates. We sign in again. A sprinkler is at work, brightening flowers and greening a lawn. Through the gates, behind the works, we come to the treatment tanks. Rows of big, handsome Sandwich Terns sit in line along their edges, barely bothering to eye the car. They have black crests, like tufts of biros behind their ears. We carry on.
    DANGER! SNAKES
BOOMSLANGS – COBRAS
PUFF ADDERS
    â€˜Crikey,’ says Dad, mildly. I eye the edges of the track warily. How bizarre to realise that swallows, ‘our swallows’, spend half their time living happily alongside boomslangs and puff adders. If a boomslang bites, you bleed from everywhere until you expire. A good dose of puff adder venom will kill you in half an hour.
    Now we are moving into the lagoons. Tracks run along dykes. Wild flowers flatten in the wind, the sea wind, coming straight off the Indian Ocean about 300 yards away.
    Every time the path divides the choice is between a rough track and a rougher one, and DANGER! SNAKES boards stand sentry. There are flamingos in the ponds, and ducks, and then there they are, at last.
    We barely recognise them: beautiful creatures with bright blue backs, the ferocious sea light whitened their undersides, they are like little arrowheads flinging themselves along ditches below the car,whipping up to our level, battling the ocean wind, peeling back over themselves, and even perching, just close enough to us, on a bush, for Dad to take a photo.
    We jump out of the car, looking out for snakes, and meet the birds at the water’s edge. They look different: smaller, paler and more ragged than the swallows I know. I had never seen one in moult. They begin to moult in South Africa, and many continue as they journey north, arriving in Europe completely refeathered, looking their best, ready to court and be courted. The extraordinary thing about the moult is the precision it requires. The migrating swallow must moult symmetrically: if a feather drops earlier or grows faster than its twin on the other side of the bird, flight will be unbalanced, manoeuvrability impaired and the chances of survival slashed. Every swallow is a collection of feather-bent parallel curves, growing in unison.
    So though the swallow which landed on a little bush beside us was not a baby, could not have been, it did look like one. Perhaps it was a first-year female. Perhaps it was a first-year female born in our barn or above the front door on top of Mum’s electricity meter, last May.
    â€˜Look at them – so close!’
    â€˜They are wonderful,’ Dad says.
    â€˜Hello, swallow . . .’
    â€˜That’s the one, is it?’ Dad has a sidelong smile.
    â€˜Yes – Hello, sweetheart! Fancy a trip to Wales?’
    We drove away, after a while, happy. It starts here, I kept thinking, here. And there is Table Mountain, and there is the sea, and that was my swallow. It has begun.
    Two days later we went to the station, passed multiple checks to get