Country diary: Peak District

The cattle pasture and villages around the Dove and Manifold rivers were made more charming by the presence of so many swallows. Over one dry slope in a side dale to the Dove proper, I came across a flock of around 200 birds, house martins and swallows, whiffling down like huge quick-winged butterflies just above the tips of the hawthorn bushes. They had clearly found some rich seam of aerial invertebrates and were taking full advantage.

Then in Hollinsclough I came upon several family parties angling between the dark heavy mass of several mature sycamores. Rain clouds brooded overhead, and beyond the hill slope, above the village, the ravens croaked and chased each other. Through this tableau of green light, deep shadow and dark sounds, the village swallows threaded their way as flickering blue scraps. While they wove their loose lines in the air around me I began to appreciate the full cycle at work in that moment. There was the green pasture, then the cattle, then all that cow dung and all those cattle yards, with their attendant flies and abundant insect life, and out of this land, with all its disparate and deep-rooted elements, were the swallows born.