Summer Residents at Sizergh Castle?

Fragrant sweet-pea flowers

The fragrance of sweet-peas in the flower and vegetable garden is delightful. And  contrasts of colour, form and architecture in the planting are impressive. All that's missing is a warm welcome from Charlie the cat.  Visitors to SIzergh  wander the gardens  and perhaps  have lunch at the cafe.  Then head for home having taken in the highlights of the season.
I always wonder about past  inhabitants of  this ancient castle.  And who is ensconced here after we visitors have departed? 
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The chatter of swallows fills the air about Sizergh Castle and birds skim low over a lawn below the castle wall, scooping up insects to feed their young.  They weave flight-webs over the lawn,  thrillingly low and close, twisting and turning to show white bellies and dark mantles.  Beyond the lake  others hunt insects amongst  cattle grazing in  pastures.    About the facade of the castle young swallows call  for food.   They build where there's shelter from bright sun and from wind and rain, tucked into  embrasures and shadowy niches where paint and plaster erode and fade  with age and  swallow-shit daubs  wall and window.   Here swallow build with skill.  The male and female swallow work together collecting mud and grasses and each beak-full creates a blob that dries-out to create the nest that is stuck to the castle wall on all sides, only the base  is unsupported.
Sunlight does not fall  onto a nest in a window recess   and I only see the adult swallow clinging to it in the photographs I take.  I can hear young birds but cannot see them. 

Another nest sits high in a shadowy corner. Tendrils of grasses hang down from pellets of dried mud that compose the structure. There's a glimpse of white and black plumage and a  ghostly image of a young bird on the edge of the nest.  An adult flies in to deliver food and perches long enough to feed them.  Then  the young birds clamour with wide open gapes that glow out of the shadows so the adults can see where to place the insects they've caught.    
Then we visitors go home and leave the castle to its avian residents and wish them a successful breeding season. These young birds will be a second or third brood.

A line from Shakespeare echoes in my thought.  Lady Macduff asks her young son,
​' How will you live without  a father?'
He replies, ' As birds do mother. With what I get, I mean.'
Swallows must be resourceful if they are to thrive, choosing to breed in the shelter of a castle surrounded by gardens and farmland where there will be insects to feed themselves and their broods.   And lakes where the birds could collect mud to repair and build their nests. 
Pears ripen on a castle wall and the kitchen garden is an attractive mix of flowers and vegetables.  It's a picture self-reliance and sustainability.  
Looking at that first closed, convex mud nest- so neat and well constructed compared to the second nest- I'm struck not only by the contrast of the two nests but the bird clinging to it is bright white about the face and I reckon I glimpse a streak of white rump.  The image isn't clear but I can't see swallow streamers- so I consult birder par excellence Jeff Holmes.  He know for sure but he always encourages looking more closely and thinking it through.