There’s a particular kind of joy in watching swallows dip and dive over open ground at dusk — swooping low, then arcing skyward, chasing insects on the wing with an agility that never fails to amaze. This year at Living Springs Log House, we’ve had the pleasure of watching that joy multiply. Where we once had a single swallow nest tucked beneath the deck, we now have three — full of chatter, activity, and a whole new generation of babies learning to fly.

Why Swallows Matter

Swallows are more than lovely to watch — they’re a quiet but powerful signal of a healthy, balanced ecosystem. These birds are aerial insectivores, meaning they feed almost exclusively on flying insects caught mid-air. A thriving swallow population tells you that the land beneath them is doing its job: rich soil, healthy water sources, and an abundance of insect life supporting the whole food web. Where pesticides and chemical treatments dominate a landscape, insect populations plummet — and swallows disappear along with them. Their presence is a vote of confidence in the land.

Swallows are also famously selective about where they choose to nest. They look for safety from predators, shelter from weather, and proximity to open space for hunting. When swallows return to the same property year after year — and especially when their numbers grow — it means they’ve found a place that meets all of those needs. They’ve found a place worth staying.

From One Nest to Three

Three years ago, we had a single swallow nest here at Living Springs Log House. This year, that number has tripled. The underside of the deck, above the concrete slab in front of the basement suite, has become a favorite spot — protected, elevated, and close to the open sky the swallows need for their acrobatic hunting flights. Watching the parents come and go all season, feeding one clutch after another, has been one of the quiet delights of life here.

We’ve talked about building a proper swallow house — a small “hotel” with multiple nesting compartments — to give them even more room to settle in. For now, though, they seem perfectly content with the shelter they’ve found on their own, and their numbers speak for themselves. Robert even built a little shelf for one of the nests so they could be more protected.

The one disadvantage is the poop on the concrete slab. But what is that compared with all the joys?

A Living Property

I love living on land that hums with life: birdsong at sunrise, swallows tracing the evening sky. The swallows found this place on their own. They keep coming back. And this year, they brought friends.

This post was written by Patricia Mikkelson, a resident of the Living Springs Log House and friend of its owner, Barbara, in collaboration with Claude.ai of Anthropic, my AI writing partner — who, it turns out, gets just as excited about swallow nests and thriving ecosystems as I do. It’s a fun reminder that even the words on this blog reflect the same spirit as the land itself: many hands (and a little help from technology) working together to tell the story of a place worth loving.