Swifts, swallows and seagulls.

[Cranfield]

I have been having a few part day outings this week over late drilled peas, in some very, very strong winds.

The fields are so open that I could not put out shell decoys, as I ended up chasing them down the field (not a pretty sight) and the rotary would not make headway against the winds.

So it was dead birds from the freezer and added shot birds as they came along.

 

The bags were modest, "worst" was 8 pigeons and 5 corvids, the best being 25 pigeons and 3 corvids.

I was set up in front of the only little hawthorn bush on the edge of a 50 acre field, with no other cover.

The high winds made shooting interesting, but it was the antics of the non quarry birds that kept me on my toes.

Swifts , swallows and seagulls, kept swooping in from behind the bush with their aeronautical displays right over the decoys and the gun was up and down like a fiddlers elbow.

 

It appears to be a good year for swifts, I have never seen so many in our area.

They always seem to be mystical birds to me, you have got to be impressed with a bird that can sleep on the wing.

[oscarsdad]

I spent about 20 minutes yesterday just watching them fly around-I live right by the canal and they were all taking the hatch off there...stunning to watch.

[caeser]

I must confess, I haven't seen any swifts this year. Plenty of swallows and martins though.

I know exactly where you're coming from with the gun going up and down. I do the same myself, with flies and insects coming from behind too.

[rimfire4969]

I had heard about Swifts sleeping on the wing and just had a quick search and found this below.

 

"Swifts do not land to roost, but spend the night at 1.5 km above the ground...To measure their flight speed, Swedish scientists used radar. They found that swifts let the air blow past their wings at 8 to 10 m/s (29-36 km/h). At these air speeds, swift wings deliver maximum flight efficiency. For the swift that means more gliding and less flapping to maintain altitude...

The swifts for this study had been brought in dead or dying to seven Dutch bird sanctuaries. Swifts, when forced to land on the ground, cannot take off by themselves and will starve unless a kind and timely passer-by throws them in the air. Swifts are the most aerial of birds. They migrate annually from South Africa to Europe. Over their lifetime, swifts cover 4.5 million kilometres, a distance equal to six round trips to the moon or 100 times around the Earth. At day, swifts hunt insects; at night they 'roost' in flight. Swifts even mate in the air and land only lay their eggs, in nests tucked away into crevices of walls and cliffs. Swifts are not related to swallows. They are family of another well-known aerial acrobat, the hummingbird"

 

Thanks for push start Cranfield, i am a bit older and a bit wiser.

[Chard]

I was thinking the other day that there seemed to be a few more Swifts around than previous years.

 

The sky used to be full of them, and Swallows and Martins. Unfortunately these days, it's possible to look into the sky and not see a bird anywhere. When one does come along it's invariably a pigeon or crow.

 

Not sure what the problem is, but it's not good. Herbicides and insecticides I reckon