Summer Swallows

It's been a long day, a busy day, moving sheep and checking troughs, inspecting fences. We drenched two mobs of big, headstrong wethers. Hard work on a hot day. At the end the dusk comes very slowly, the heat sitting in the hollow, the sky turning orange like the underbelly of the swallows.
Swallows nest on the metal girders of the machinery shed. Swarms of them swoop in and out through the open front side of the shed catching insects abundent in the gloaming; their darts are a pure, sharply precise cutting of the air. My brother winds down after the long day shooting them with the air rifle. He is quite an accurate shot. The roof and tops of the walls of the shed are speckled with dozens of feathery, bloody slpodges. He knocks down their nests, too, until dad gets annoyed with the mess of the nests falling on the vehicles parked underneath.