Conflicting interests

We’re having a bumper Summer season. Wonderful rains cause all the rivulets to gush and gurgle like they haven’t for three consecutive seasons. It is lush and green and simply gorgeous everywhere around us. Cattle shine like polished stones where they lie ruminating in the pastures amongst wildflowers and frolicking calves. It’s the way I’ve always imagined heaven would look like.

And we have swallows. Hundreds of tiny fighter pilots that descend on us every morning, swooping and diving just above the lawn.

We also have flies. Hordes of them, caused by a combination of factors: a cattle feeding lot that was recently started close by, very high temperatures and all this rain.

We’re doing everything we can to handle the problem without resorting to chemical means: burners with peppermint and citronella oil work well to repel the pesky things inside our home. Outside we have bags of flybait that fill up alarmingly quickly. But still, it is not enough. Walking or sitting outside is very unpleasant and nothing so irritates as one lazy fly that singles you out come dawn as you’re trying to squeeze in another couple of minutes of sleep.

So we were seriously contemplating pulling out the big guns. Enter the swallows. At first only a few showed up but soon the news spread and they arrived in full force. It is a sight to behold! They seem largely oblivious to us walking among them as they hunt and it is magical to have them so close, hearing the small clicks as they connect with a fly.

Maybe this will help a little, we thought, and took a random guess: if there’s a 100 swallows and each of them catches a 100 flies per day, that would make it 10 000 less flies per day. Not bad at all! We should be seeing the bait bags fill up less quickly.

Then I googled it. We were way too conservative. A barn swallow can catch up to 60 insects per hour, which makes it 850 a day, one source claims. Times a 100 swallows makes it 85 000 less flies per day!

As I walk to the studio, the flies and the swallows about me, I marvel at the conflicting nature of things. I honestly can’t stand the flies, but I just love the swallows. And because of the flies, the swallows came. Maybe there’s a pattern here?

Matilda

Photo credit: Roger Hunt