I RECENTLY stumbled upon the popular jazz song Autumn Leaves, composed by Joseph Kosma with original French lyrics by Jacques Prévert, later written in English by Johnny Mercer.
Recorded by many notable performers from Nat King Cole and Eva Cassidy to ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ himself, Frank Sinatra, it describes how the falling leaves of autumn bring closer "old winter’s song".
The cooler air of late and falling leaves pull us ever deeper into autumn and closer to winter’s grasp. As I write, chaffinches, collared doves and a wood mouse feed on a carpet of beech mast under my tree’s dense canopy, while coal-tits raid the remaining honeysuckle berries.
So, on October 9, I was surprised to see a family of swallows flying acrobatically above a local river and wood. These stragglers, a late brood, were diving, turning and taking food on the wing from parents while fine tuning their flying skills in readiness for the long migration to South Africa.
Long before the arrival of proper scientific ornithology, bird migration was not properly understood. People were aware that some birds appeared in the summer and then promptly disappeared in the autumn, with others appearing in winter, only to vanish again in the spring.
Many scholars and naturalists believed that the swallow, Hirunda rustica, hibernated at the bottom of ponds in mud during the winter. As far back as 350 BC, Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote about the subject in his pioneering work of zoology, Historia Animalium (History of Animals), saying that while some species migrate to distant places, others including the swallow, "simply hide themselves where they are".
The Swedish writer Olaus Magnus wrote of the swallow in his history and folklore work, History of the Northern Peoples (1555), saying, "In the beginning of autumn, they assemble together among the reeds of ponds, where, allowing themselves to sink into the water, they join bill to bill, wing to wing, and foot to foot."
Gilbert White, the naturalist and curate of Selborne parish in southern England from 1751, was also obsessed about whether the swallow and similar species migrated or hibernated. In letters contained in his famous work, The Natural History of Selborne (1789), he wrote, "though most of the swallow kind may migrate, some do stay behind and hide with us during the winter".
Despite enlisting the help of locals to scour bushes and hideaways for sleeping birds, he obviously never found his evidence. Ironically, however, it was Gilbert White’s methodical fieldwork techniques and first-hand observations of local birds which would ultimately dispel the myth of swallow hibernation.
By the 19th century the use of ringing and banding to track bird movements for scientific purposes was established, proving that birds did migrate long distances in summer and winter.
The Irish for swallow, fáinleog, probably comes from fán, meaning to wander or stray. Characterised by their aerial acrobatics and chattering, the swallow’s aerial prowess and speed are frequently referenced in Irish legend. In Táin Bó Cúailnge, (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) Cúchulainn’s scythed chariot was said to move "as swiftly as a swallow", while in the same tale he meets and kills the warrior Fannell. From the old Irish 'fáinle' or swallow, Fannell was believed to have got his name because "he could skim over the water as lightly as a swallow".
Seeing these swallows play in the sky as if they had just arrived, I thought of Yeats’s line from Coole Park (1929), "They came like swallows and like swallows went". With old winter’s song soon to come, I wished them a fair wind for their long journey south.
