Aerial acrobats are back

These are exciting times for our twitching friends as a new round of migrants are on their way dowitchers will be mingling with yellowlegs and phalaropes as we bid a fond farewell to the whooper swans, the fieldfares and the redwings and welcome to the warblers, martins and swallows.

I saw my first butterflies and a bumble bee last week as the temperatures became almost tropical but as the temperatures rise it is the swallows, swifts and martins that make the summer months for me.


Sand martin will often use man made structures to nest in this is in the bridge walls in Dumfries over the river Nith

First to arrive will be the sand martins - industrious little birds that are never stray far from water. They usually turn up around mid to late March. Sand martins, as their name suggests, enjoy nesting in exposed sand banks, these are somewhat of a premium in many places these days but im lucky in that quarries quite close to me offer excellent opportunites for cliff nesting. I will be making a point of taking the camera along on some fine spring day in the near future.

An artificial sand martin wall on the Montrose basin, Scotland

Next to arrive are the swallows and the house martins, the former being one of my all-time favourites (oh to have the pleasure of a barn with swallows in it). The last but by no means least to arrive and with the shortest stay are the swifts, the greatest of aerial acrobats.

All these birds, that are so familiar with most of us and locked in our folklore, are under immense threat. Threats which are just as apparent on our home soil as overseas. Let’s not forget that some swallows fly as far south as the Cape in South Africa, which is pretty long way requiring many stop over points on the way. Their winter feeding grounds are becoming sterile waste grounds where pesticides long since banned in the developed world are used to eradicate insect pests and boost production - the vital oasis across the deserts are drying up and turning to dust compounds. If that wasn’t enough, facing dehydration and starvation many get shot and trapped as they cross the Mediterranean.


A swallow on the barn roof

The first time you see a chattering mixed group of swallows and martins pass over-head or better still, lining abreast along a telephone wire, you know the summer is here; but still the threats continue on reaching their breeding areas. I remember watching columns of swallows, martins and swifts rising above the roof tops as high as you could see, hawking for insects way into the sky. Years of pesticide abuse mean we just don’t have the insect populations anymore, likewise, the culprit lies in a lack of nesting opportunities.


Like the declines in our house sparrow and starling populations, there is a definite correlation to be made in modern housing and the refurbishment of older housing with plastic soffits and sealed guttering. even traditional sites such as barns and old farm buildings now have their doors closed or are turned in second homes.

All the houses where I lived when I was young offered a place for starlings and house sparrows - where the eaves over-hung, house martins too in their replacement cliff ledges - now there aren’t any or very few. I still see where people have knocked martin nests from under their eves or from outside public places like the loos at Kielder water, sighting the mess they make or the pathetic repeated attempts by swifts, starlings or sparrows to gain entry to a past nest site in the new guttering. For the sake of a few months inconvenience, or putting out a bird box, or better still just turning a blind eye and enjoying the spectacle. It is of course illegal to do these things but it happens every year and it never ceases to amaze me how frequently it ocurrs.

There is nothing better than a warm late spring evening witnessing the chasing throng of screaming swifts at top speed around the roof tops, or just the chatter of sparrows from the gabble end.

The humble house sparrow

These are the sights and sounds of what summer is all about. There are still places where you can see these spectacles and a spectacle is what it is, you don’t need to see herds of wildebeast tramping across the Serengeti to make a spectacle, a walk by many a farm yard in summer will give you views of swallows darting in and out of the byres with the aerial precision that would make the Red Arrows envious but for most of us like so many things it has disappeared from common view.

Last summer I waited and waited for these birds to appear over my roof top but slow they were in appearing and few in number too, very depressing indeed because after all one swallow does not make a summer and what sad place this would be without them.

One swallow does not make a summer