IN reply to Mr and Mrs Smith’s (Letters, June 8, ‘Where are the swallows?’) I am pleased that I am not alone in noticing the decreasing numbers of these beautiful birds, and I suggest that some of the reasons for their decline lie close to home.

Swallows feed on insects. There are not so many insects now as a few decades ago, as demonstrated by the often quoted ‘far fewer squashed insects on the car windscreen’ situation.

Reasons for this include habitat loss (concreting over land), use of pesticides, destruction of hedgerows and reduction in wild flowers. Fields treated with fertilisers grow only coarse grass with few flowers, and hay meadows are very scarce.

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Swallows ideally nest in barns. Most of the barns round here are being converted to houses, with no space left for the birds, so they have to resort to inferior sites like porches where they can find them.

Swallows also struggle to find insect food on their migration routes through Europe and there are changes in land-management in their wintering grounds in Africa which could cause them problems.

Sadly much of Britain’s wildlife is in serious decline, and the swallow is just one example of this.

Eve Templeton

Brigsteer