The start of our summer trip has been a bit leisurely: I’ve been slowly recovering from having been ill for most of July, so we’ve been taking it slowly. On the first Sunday morning, whilst still in Birdham, we were awoken by a lot of Swallow song. I got up to put the kettle on and was somewhat taken aback to meet a swallow in the saloon, who’d just flown in via the foredeck hatch. He (it was foolhardy enough for me to assume it was male) saw me, and gently turned and retreated back to the forepeak and back out of the hatch.
When he, or one of his friends, returned I had my phone ready.
One of the morning tasks was cleaning the deck. To be fair to the swallows they weren’t really the culprit. The Starlings that had been gorging on blackberries and then perching in large numbers on our mast head were much more of a (messy) issue.