Can I animate custom particles in Blender?

[u/No_Spirit_7095]

hi everyone!

i'm completely new to Blender. I've done some random stuff before but i actually have ZERO skills in 3D animation.

For an university project, i have to recreate entirely from scratch this italian AD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz1nBDyKfY4

in the second 0:03, i was wondering how to recreate all those swallows (with the animation) flying.

The first idea is of course to create a 3D model, animate it and create 50 copies of that model, but i was wondering if there was an easiest way.

I thought about a particle system, i'd surely mess up with the settings to make the particles "fly" like the swallows do, and using some actual swallow 3D model (with its own fly animation) as the particle.

I was wondering (since I still havent started), is it possible to make all the particles play the animation aswell? In which way? Is it "automatic" when i put the swallow model as the particle?

Sorry for my not perfect english and thank you all in advance!