It is the essence of the Mediterranean summer evening. You sit on your terrace enjoying the sunset in the insistent warmth, while squadrons of birds scream over the roof-tops. The whitewashed buildings are edged with nests; the tangle of wires between them are neatly pegged with perchers, and every evening they fill the sky: high-altitude cruisers, alley flutterers and daring roof-skimmers.
Why do they come to town? You see them in the countryside, but scattered like the villas: over villages there are hundreds. I presume it's us: our litterbins, livestock and slovenly lifestyles attract billions of bugs, swarming over our dwellings and rising like steam from the streets. A nesting pair of swifts can catch 20,000 insects in a day, but it seems there're still plenty to go round. That's a nice thought, isn't it?
These birds, like so many of us ex-pats, are migrants: millions cross the Straits of Gibraltar each Spring and spread throughout Europe, up as far as arctic Scandinavia! Swifts, Swallows and House-Martins, (or Vencejos, and Aviones in Spanish). To take the last, first, Martins are neat little birds (wingspan 26-29cm), black on top (head, back, wings, tail), white underneath (face, breast, belly), with a white rump. They are excellent builders, so these are the ones we see most of in the alleyways: those colonies of overlapping nests (the oldest whitewashed, the fresh mud-brown) under house-eves are theirs. You might say that their tenement blocks are
better built and certainly get completed faster than the 'developments' of Málaga region. But Martins don't worry about building permits either. They've been known to colonise street lamps, ferries and flyovers. They can be neighbourly: in cold weather dozens pack together for warmth. But urgent nest repairs brings about building site pilfering!
Swallows are bigger (wingspan 32-35cm) and very handsome. They have blue-black head and back, a white underside and a red face. Their forked fan tails feature 'streamer' feathers either side for balance. For Swallows are stunt flyers, the Red Arrows of the bird world! Angled wings and that fancy tail give them astonishing manoeuvrability. They know it: they are terrible show offs! They revel in high-speed low-level swooping and swerving, as they catch insects or dip drinks from water deposits, pick off bugs from dusty road edges, or loop down narrow-lanes to perch on the power-lines. It's mainly you'll spot Swallows pegging the lines; hope they don't 'spot' as you pass underneath. The Spanish say it brings good luck (but that's just to make the pooped-on feel better!)
I love Swallows. They are so elegant and are both familiar and exotic. They bring an incredible grace so close I can almost touch it. But, for all that, compared to Swifts, they are ground lovers.
Swifts have the most aerial life-style of all. For their first two years they don't touch the ground!
They eat, sleep and mate on the wing – but the last brings them down to earth: eggs and chicks need a nest. Their bodies are built for their air: they aren't much bigger than Swallows but their wings are very long (42-48cm wingspan) and
scimitar-curved. From blunt head to short tail they are torpedo shaped and streamlined, with tiny beak and feet and deep-set eyes. Their legs are so short, in fact, that if grounded they can't lift off: an earthed swift won't survive unless re-launched by a friendly hand. That's why they nest on high ledges: they can get going by the simple trick of falling off!
It is Swifts who party every evening making all the noise. They fly low in shrieking parties. It's all about sex (wouldn't you know it), though whether males are picked for flying agility or noise is anyone's guess. And 'swift' is no mis-nomer: they are one of the fastest birds; 60mph is a synch, and they'll double that in a dive. They're also the real high flyers: in the heat of the day as you laze by the pool you may see them lazing at high-altitude (up to 3000m!) without a wing-beat and 'sieving' the 'air-plankton' tossed up there by turbulence. Just like Martins and Swallows they're long-distance travellers. They're long-lived for small birds, 10 years or more…provided, they make it across the Sahara each year.
distance travellers. They're long-lived for small birds, 10 years or more…provided, they make it across the Sahara each year.
It won't surprise you that, like most attractive natural things, these birds are in decline. That's partly building techniques reducing access to, for instance, roof-spaces, in some parts of Europe. Looking about locally, though, I can't see nest-site shortage being a problem here. The on-going expansion of the Sahara is a hardship, but the main problem's decades of insecticide use in farming. Try remembering the birds when you are itching mosquito bites in the summer! For it's the bugs they come for: Africa has resident species of to eat theirs; Europe used to have plenty to spare.
There is one other insect eater, you may see among them in the evenings. It's tiny: it has a crimp-edged silhouette and flitters and flutters like a drunken driver. This isn't a bird, it's a bat! What is it doing out in daylight? They're supposed to be nocturnal: but tell them that as they flicker past in the company of these fabulous birds, the most familiar migrants: the heralds of summer!
