It was Aristotle, in the first book of his Nichomachean Ethics, who wrote, “For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy” to conclude his point that the cultivation of virtue takes prolonged effort and a great amount of time.
So where am I going to go from this profound philosophical point to make a clever segue into Mike Unwin’s RSPB Spotlight: Swifts & Swallows? Not a clue – I just needed a familiar quote about either Swallows or Swifts, and I thought my other possible choice from the eleventh verse of the ninth chapter of Ecclesiastes “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all” was a bit to forced.
“…to the ‘swift,'” get it?
Now do you see why I made the choice I did?
