And Swallows Yet Again

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 The flock of 150+ migrating swallows started to melt away at around lunchtime yesterday having spent 24 hrs or so stocking up on insects (we had noticed a haze of little black flies about so perhaps that is what they were eating). As the swallows left a smaller flock (50 ish) of house martins took their place.  This morning the vast majority of the birds had moved on and we were left with a handful of stragglers. I took the opportunity to photograph the swallows whilst they were around. The first photograph shows that you can identify the male birds because they have much longer tail streamers (male on the right)


The next image is of a juvenile bird showing a buff coloured face.

And lastly an adult bird with a red face ( a female I think by the length of the tail streamers)
We don't normally see swallows in October so perhaps that is the last we will see of them this year but I will be watching out.

Diary.
Some close up views of buzzards by the house yesterday and a fly past by a female sparrowhawk. Saw a willow warbler (late for them to be still about) and a greenfinch. Trail cams showed a hedgehog in the garden again last night.





Comments

  1. werdnauk26 September 2021 at 09:49

    You may be interested in the BBC 4 Natural Histories on Swallows today 26 Sept at 6.35am
    bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b096hclv

    ReplyDelete
  2. EdenWildlife26 September 2021 at 10:01

    Thanks I heard it and very good it was too.

    ReplyDelete

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