Flight of the Swallows

Today, they flew.  When I walked out the door to do morning chores, the air was full of chirping and calling, and fluttering wings.  Mama and Daddy (Hekyll and Jekyll) swooped around them, encouraging them.  When the last four launched, two were dead within hours, one into the door, and the other, found out in the yard.  Of these four, all fluttered around the porch, onto the wires, onto the porch roof and off again.  I went to work happy for them.

Tonight, there were only three.  Hekyll and Jekyll were flying farther away feeding, and the three little ones huddled, two on the wires, and one on the porch roof.  At nightfall, their parents had come back for a few minutes, and I watched one lone baby try to make his way down the wire, fluttering his wings, to his sibling.  The sibling flew off, and he is huddled out there in the dark, alone.  After weeks of no rain, black clouds came over at dusk and there is a breeze and lightening cutting across the western sky in jagged arrows.  We just went out to check on him again at 10:30, and he is hunched down, holding on.  I hope he is okay by morning, they are such pretty little birds.