They come in like bats. Two black shapes on my periphery, fluttering like a magician’s fingers. I straighten from my shovel — working past sunset again — and watch as they circle our porch light. They land atop the fixture.
Bats don’t do that. I step closer. They leap off the fixture and go twittering into the dusk.
The following evening, they are back. By now, I know that this is the first midwinter record of barn swallows on the Key Peninsula…