The swallows are back! After a draught of them for nearly five years, a pair is building a nest under our long, colonnaded porch on the west side of our house.

Our old adobe farm house is named for them, Las Golondrinas: the swallows. When we first came, back in 2002, they were plentiful, with mud nests in evidence all around our buildings. However, they disappeared in the wake of our total re-design of the landscaping on all sides of our house and the heavy construction that followed as we added the massive viga posts and beams and built the extensive porch system that follows the line and length of our home on the west side. I speculated that the intrusions of the bobcat, the brick layers, the builders and landscapers, all of which went on in phases for two years, were too much for them and they abandoned our old place for somewhere quieter.

I’m glad they’re back. I missed them as my harbingers of spring. The nesting pair at work now under our porch are nest-building late in the season this year. Typically, they scout out suitable nest locations early in the season–often before the end of March–and get busy with their courting rituals early. No matter. This pair’s landlord is glad to have them back.

With our irrigation ditch less than 30 feet away, our swallows have all the mosquitoes they can catch in the evenings and all the fresh water they need. They’re handsome, petite birds, with red and blue coloring, and distinctive mumbling vocalics. Their sharp angular wings make them exquisite fliers for darting after flying insects.

I suspect they’ve been here all along during these ‘vacant’ years; they were nesting out of range waiting to see if the new owners passed muster. I take their new nest as a solid vote of swallow confidence: they’ve built it right in front of the french doors leading to the west-side porch and close to the wicker rocking chair where I like to sit with coffee and the dogs in the early morning (the signature photo appearing at the top of each MacBlog post shows this chair and the french doors in the background). I think the word is out in swallow land: “These folks with the short-legged dogs and other animals are okay. We’ll let them keep our name on the old place!”

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine

Feasts and feast-days are important to communities, especially in the Southwest where I live, where a rich blending of Native American and Hispanic cultures crowds the annual calendar with feast-days.

I’ve been thinking about feasts and feast-days recently while watching my donkey, Merton, and the leader of our pygmy goats, Spanky, during feeding down at the donkey barn. Our two fully-grown goats, Spanky and Tevi, are fed on the platform roof of a house I built for the goats next to Merton’s stall inside the barn–built right after the pack of stray dogs killed three of our original five little goats. At that time I felt our little goats needed to stay near the donkeys’ protection and it’s turned out that they’ve bonded as real barnyard buddies. What I didn’t anticipate was that the goats would prefer the top of their new house to the inside–they use the flat top as counter top for meals! So Spanky and Tevi jump up on the platform roof on cue when I come with feed bowls and Merton lines up at his hay bin next to them.

Recently I observed that Merton and Spanky have a special ‘chow buddy’ relationship: they eat grass hay almost nose to nose out of the same hay bin. The humor in their shared feast is in the fact that the small bench I built against the barn wall to support the hay bin is too small for Spanky to perch on while reaching for hay, so with hind feet on the ground beside the hay bin, he puts front feet on the support bench and reaches for hay while Merton quietly chomps away. Now, this strategy worked well when Spanky was smaller, less wide. Now that he is fully grown the little hay bin support bench is too narrow for both his front feet, so he kneels on his right knee and dangles his whole left front leg off the front of the support bench while sharing in Merton’s feast!

Truth is, it doesn’t matter how many ‘legs’ we involve in shared feasts, the important thing in life is shared moments where we come together and reaffirm the importance of our group. Today as I watched Merton and Spanky in relaxed feast-sharing it struck me that my animals practice by instinct what I struggle to grasp by intellect.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine