Today is the 6th February and it’s been an unseasonably warm and sunny day and just to add to the odd feeling that maybe just maybe the worst of the winter is behind us – this afternoon flying around the Duomo were three swallows or swifts
Normally they arrive in Barga much closer to Easter but this year they are very early.
The phrase here is “one swallow does not a spring make” and the weather forecast for the following week is not all that ” spring like” so maybe we should be a little bit more pessimistic.
The swallows in Barga are an annual feast visually and aurally with their coming heralding the arrival of spring and their leaving for the warmer climes of far away Africa, the rather dismal foretelling of the approaching winter.
There has been a particular group of swallows who nest each year under the Volta del Menchi below Palazzo Pancrazi in Barga Vecchia.
Their acrobatic flying through the open arches and walkways in the Volta has been one of the glorious sights of Barga in the summer.
Later on in the summer we get to see their young swooping noisily around the Volta del Menchi and then soon after, the bitter sweet melancholy bit where they will sit in line on some of the wires strung through Barga Vecchia and then one morning they will all just disappear again.
The cycle repeats itself each year and never fails to amaze.