On a windy spring day, I stand on a rocky shore with my back to Galway Bay, staring at a low, sandy cliff. Halfway up, there's an irregular line of holes which I am attempting to count – thirty, thirty-five, maybe forty in all.
All summer long, the sky here is alive with chittering, dancing birds, looping and twisting and spiralling, for the holes are the nests of sand martins, the small, brown-and-white cousins of swallows.
Each pair of martins digs out a burrow close to their neighbours and lays a clutch of eggs inside...
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