Hirondelles Nouvelles

Mum and I are just like new grandparents with the arrival of the first vintage of - what? - five, six expectant swallow families?

Very well behaved lot they are, too, no twittering, which bodes well.
Parents flying back and forth with fodder etc and swanking to the others whose brood have yet to make an appearance.
They ain't no altruists, are those swallows: one year a nest of 5 babes was for some reason deserted by the parentios.

Tweeting and bleating with beaks agape, they were, as the other parents flapped by loaded with nosh for *their* young.

Slowly the tweets got softer. Then one morning there were just 5 little heads sagging forlornly over the nest's edge and we had to get Theodoros to climb up and lift the little bodies out and give 'em a decent Orthodox burial.