A Connecting Thread

swifts
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

Swifts seem to be a connecting thread throughout my life at the moment. I seem to see them wherever I am. Not tens or hundreds of them, just two, three or four, and not for long either, but enough to know they’re there. As I was laid on my back lawn watching clouds go by, one warm evening this week, all of the airborne insect-eaters (swift, swallow and house martin) flew through my patch of sky. On my way to work, as I drove past a field of poppies at Barwick, swifts flashed in front of my car. From my window at work in Armley, the unmistakable black sickle shapes screamed over the school field. (I even saw them on the way to the chip shop in Rothwell).

I can’t help being fascinated by swifts. Aside of their speed and agility, they lead an extraordinary life, almost entirely on the wing. At night, swifts fly thousands of feet up and sleep as they glide. They can travel many miles during the night, yet at the speed they fly they can be back where they started in next to no time. Swifts mate in flight and then need to build nests on ledges and other high places so that they can drop from the nest, in order to get up the speed needed to fly, so much so that a grounded swift will shortly be a dead swift, unable to take to the air from the ground. And then there’s the chicks to feed, a swift can fly thousands of miles in one trip to find enough food for the chicks. Whilst mum and dad are away, the chicks can go into a kind of torpor, slowing their metabolic rate down, to survive for up to ten days without food.

Swifts head back to Africa fairly early compared to other migrants, any time from August onwards. It’s for this reason that the last swift you see is one of the harbingers of autumn being used by the BBC’s Autumnwatch. Until then, I’ll be listening for those piercing screams and looking out for that characteristic black silhouette and flickering flight. Perhaps I won’t need to, they’ll come to me.

Robins' Nest

robins
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

Yesterday morning was warm enough to eat breakfast al fresco. I was treated to the song of a common whitethroat, previously unheard in the garden in the 8 or more years we’ve lived here. However, I didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of him, thanks to the density of the hawthorn, but I could hear his song get progressively more distant as he presumably moved away along the row of lombardy poplars behind the house.

Something I did catch a glimpse of was a jay, as it swooped right in front of the car, as I drove past Temple Newsam on the M1, on my way home.

In the evening, it was nice to watch the pair of robins that are nesting in the ivy on the hawthorn at the bottom of the garden. They’re always to be seen with beakfuls of food for their chicks. They both sit in the buddleia before going back to their nest. The parent birds are the only birds that will still feed in the garden whilst my little boy is tearing around with his rake or some other such ‘weapon’. Those chicks must be hungry!

We all know how round and tubby robins look on Christmas cards so it was unusual to see how sleek and skinny they both looked. Hopefully, it’s just because of the warm weather, making them flatten their feathers down to keep cooler.

A Free Concert

With the weather being so humid this weekend, it was hard to get enough fresh air in the house, so the double doors at the back were open from first to last. This brought the reward of a free concert, courtesy of our regular garden birds. From early evening through till dusk, collared dove, woodpigeon, robin, blackbird, song thrush, dunnock, chaffinch, chiffchaff, wren and greenfinch could all be heard singing their hearts out. Add to this, cameo appearances by goldfinch and, less musically, by housemartin and swift. Nothing less than spirit lifting.

Clematis & Welcome

clematis
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

These were the last of the clematis flowers, drawn last night. 'Were' because the petals had been blown off by the wind by this morning. Such is the ephemeral nature of nature, eh? By the way, welcome to my new blog.