Has it really been six months since I gazed over the tranquil waters of the Waterworks Reserve and made a prediction? Feeling a northerly breeze on my cheeks, I said to myself: “Today will I see the first swallow.”
In a flash, there it was, flittering in from my right as if the snow clouds of recent weeks had parted to let in spring.
No great clairvoyance on my part. Like many birders, I anticipate local arrival dates for migrants after watching them over many years.
These dates are locked in both a mental and physical notebook. Welcome swallows always arrive just before or after the first weekend of September, although my first was a little later this year, appearing on Sunday.
At the start of spring I usually scout the parks of Hobart – especially the Parliament Lawns – to see swallows and if I have no luck there my fall-back location is always the Waterworks.
The swallows are on the look-out for insects, and where I see spirals of tiny flying creatures I will find them. The Waterworks is always a good place.
Sometimes there are false alarms, A skein of starlings, pointed wings in fast flight, might fool me for a second before I realise they are not engaged in the swallows’ swooping, jinking flight. Finally here come the swallows, one or two at first and then a squadron.
I’ve really missed them for the past half year, looking forlornly across the two reservoirs at the reserve, wondering what adventures the swallows are having in the sun on the mainland, northern New South Wales and southern Queensland I presume because knowledge of Tasmanian swallows’ wintering grounds is sketchy at best.
To observe the first of this year’s arrivals more closely, I like to take up position on the embankment separating the upper and lower reservoirs. The swallow skims the lower reservoir, then scythes towards the dam wall heading for the top one closer to kunanyi/Mt Wellington. It slices directly in front of me and then lifts to just about clear my head, a flash of magenta on the breast, its wings and back steel blue. It spins again against the grey rock of the mountain and now is lashing behind me. I spin about myself, trying to track the swallow and its prey, and marvel how it can keep an eye on its target and an eye on where it is heading. This bird has unerring aim, it never misjudges.
The lone swallow might have been a little past its due date but I never doubted its appearance. Over 23 years I have put late arrivals down to cold weather and strong headwinds coming from the south. Early arrivals coincide with warmer weather, and warm tail winds from the north.
One swallow has just made my summer. And I await a few more.