Welcome swallows caught my attention today around lunchtime. I’d flung the back door open at breakfast, and left it so. The warming gentle air was convincingly Spring-like.

I heard the birds’ twittering at first. When I got up from my desk and entered the kitchen, I saw their shadows playing on the side fence between here and the neighbours’ place. I put down my glass and stepped outside. Look at them go!

There were several of them, perhaps a dozen. It didn’t occur to me to try and count them. What did occur to me was that their gleeful flight was intentional. Their motion drew a circle above me, from near the chimney about halfway down the roof to almost at the stone wall forming the narrow-side perimeter of the yard. It wasn’t until I began writing that I realised I was in the centre, from where I stood, halfway up the back stairs leading up to the grass.

My heart sang. I was smiling. I’ve been forgetting to smile of late. This energised dance of pure joy felt like a blessing, come just to remind me to drop into my heart, allow my mind to rest.

As I watched on, neck craned upward, throat open to the sky, I was amused by a couple of noisy miners who were desperate to join the party but, unable to find the rhythm or keep the pace, were relegated to the high back fence, forced into wallflower status.

All of a sudden, a dragonfly, merrily bouncing along, happened to stumble over the edge of the swallows’ diameter, right in the miners’ eye line. It diverted course, and, picking up the beat instantly, off it flew within the birds’ formation, keeping to its own unique yet complementary rhythm. The ease with which the dragonfly did this prompted another attempt by the miners to take their place on the dance floor. Alas, they were simply too slow, and were thrown back out and over to the fence with not unkind force.

All the while I stood, witness to this afternoon surprise, and stared, smile fixed, sun on my back. Their fine bodies moved with precision but also swagger when they felt like it. I caught flashes of shiny royal blue, once, orange, the pale grey of their bellies, the forked tails. Beautiful, they were, lifting my spirits as they continued in elegance their air show for one.

Welcome, swallows