Shouting at swallows

I've seen a fair bit of wildlife in the last 24 hours, sadly most of it dead. There was a decomposing chick on the path, I think a magpie or crow? Something big with a whopping beak.

And on my walk I saw a limb, which I was deciding between cat & rabbit, when I'd pretty much decided on cat [claws retracted] before walking on & finding most of the rest of a squashed kitty. Odd, it's on a farm track, so no-one goes very fast.

This morning there was half a mouse under the horse chestnut tree (and yesterday I saw a splattered one in the track), so I'm hoping I've got my share of dead animals out of the way for the summer!

An all-too-live visitor just: swallows think our house would make a perfect home - it does, but just not for them. The redstarts think that too, but they've finished nesting at the moment. Not sure if the swallows are having another brood or this is their first one this year.

It's odd how the silence of something being quiet sounds totally different from the silence of nothing there... The swallows make a racket outside and then it suddenly goes quiet, and I think a left-over from my childhood is the instinct that when a known trouble-maker goes quiet (small brothers do that when they're up to mischief!), to go and investigate.

I usually manage to notice them & shout at them till they go out; this works best for all parties, as if I have to evict them it's pretty stressful & often involves little [unwanted] "offerings" [guano!].

Last summer I had to open ALL the windows downstairs before this one swallow would finally vacate the premises! In a way I was happy (not happy that I was stressing him/her out), as we had been wondering whether they were swallows or swifts, and having to carefully lean past this chap let me get a very good view of the colouring & confirm he/she was definitely a swallow.

Thinking of which, I'm off to the stable to check nothing's nesting in there...