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Some of the James' young swallows

Swallows have been synonymous with the British summer for centuries, but for one Norfolk household they're becoming more like part of the family.

Joan and John James keep miniature horses on their farm in Forncett St Peter near Long Stratton, but the stables have been adopted as the summer home of a colony of these fascinating migratory birds.

Trump card

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Norfolk's wildlife expert Chris Skinner boasted of having seven nesting pairs in one of his barns, prompting Joan to call the station and trump him.

"We've got 11 nesting pairs and 44 babies that have reared and flown with no fatalities, they're all nesting now and most of them have babies again," she said.

"We have 16 miniature horses and they've all got stables and all the stables have got nests in."

Skinner, a conservationist from Caister St Edmund, was immensely proud of the swallows taking sanctuary on his farm, but was astonished to hear of the James' impressive colony.

"That's incredible, it's a story that's very good for swallows and well done Joan, you've obviously got the right habitat for them," he said.

Joan admitted that conditions in the barn were perfectly suited to the birds.

"They've got plenty of manure to attract flies you see.

"We can watch them hatch and grow up, they're not afraid of us, they sit around and sing to us, we just let them get on, they just live with us," she said.

Killer swallow

It's not the first time Norfolk swallows have hit the headlines this year.

While Joan's family of swallows is booming, it was a more grisly tale at the end of May when the Springwatch team observed a male swallow removing infants from a nest at Pensthorpe Nature Reserve.

Three swallow chicks hatched, but shortly after, an aggressive male (who we think wasn't the father) dramatically came and dropped them all out of the nest one by one.

It's the first time Springwatch cameras have seen the infanticide behaviour but the BTO confirmed that despite an outwardly innocent appearance, swallows may sometimes have a rather sinister side.

Unpaired males will visit the nests of other swallows to try to breed with a paired female and if they find an unattended nest containing young chicks then they may kill the entire brood, making it more likely that the established pair whose nest has been destroyed will divorce.