A SINGLE SWALLOW

From the slums of Cape Town to the palaces of Algiers through Pygmy villages where pineapples grow wild to the Gulf of Guinea where the sea blazes with oil flares across two continents and fourteen countries this epic journey is nothing to swallows they do it twice a year But for Horatio Clare writer and birdwatcher it is the expedition of a lifetime Along the way he discovers old empires and modern tribes a witch doctor s recipe for stewed swallow explains how to travel without money or a passport and describes a terrifying incident involving three Spanish soldiers and a tiny orange dog By trains motorbikes canoes one camel and three ships Clare follows the swallows from reed beds in South Africa where millions roost in February to a barn in Wales where a pair nest in May