We often walk up past a farm in the Braid Hills where swallows gather each year to make their nests and raise their young. Usually the birds arrive in early May, and until they leave in August for their journey to Africa, we visit the farm regularly to see how they’re getting on. As we lean on the gate, it never fails to lift our spirits to see the swallows swooping cheerily in and out of the stables and zooming about in intricate loops above our heads. I try to take photos, but they’re too quick for me.

The people who work in the stables believe that the same birds return year after year. Those swallows seem to know just which rafters to head for when they arrive.

This being March, it’s a while until the swallows will return, and in the meantime the sky above the farm is quiet. We walk past nevertheless to note the emptiness and remark on how quiet it is.

Suddenly I wondered if somewhere in Africa our counterparts were leaning on a gate at that moment, watching the swallows and telling each other that it won’t be long until the birds leave for their journey to Scotland. They will be preparing to say farewell to them just as we are preparing to welcome them back. I imagined us and our African counterparts doing a kind of stately long-distance dance like the little wooden man and woman did in those eighteenth-century German ‘weather houses’, one little figurine swinging out of the house to announce fine weather and the other swinging out to forecast rain.

From May to August, we Scottish swallow-fanciers come out to lean on a gate and watch them at work or play. From September to May, African swallow-lovers probably lean on a gate in Namibia or South Africa and admire their acrobatics. In the quiet months of the year we each note the empty sky in our part of the world and look forward to the birds returning.