ON THE LINE

You could not expect a richer monologue from a Shakespearian actor, than that delivered by the solitary swallow sitting centre stage on the electricity line from the pole in the orchard, into the house.

People crowd around their screens to watch Britain's Got Talent, to find in many cases it hasn't, and, in a few, it has.

But this performer would astound any audience, if only, as I did, in the still evening air, we'd stop and listen.

The swallow is amazing. It holds you, astounded at the sheer imagination put into a single call. A song is trilled and embellished and polished up with repetition. And it's almost unbelievable in its variety of sounds. Chirps, arias, themes, clicks, tutting, swells of song and single notes. All find their way in. It is as though, by nesting under eaves and in attics, the swallow has got the idea of sonic hoarding places, and has opened them all - old chests, dressing up boxes, lever arch files of old administrative records, the odd old photo album.

If you stand below a swallow singing, debating, chuckling - whatever it is that wonderful bird is doing, it is impossible not to be filled with a sense of kinship. Not that your heart is struck, but your humour. You may not be invited into its soul. But you're invited to a rummage through every drawer of its vocal possessions.