Swifts

[Elaine]

There has been a distinct lack of Swifts this year around here. Working on my allotment was always accompanied by the screaming parties of Swifts overhead (and sometimes around us, on low flying sorties!) and I loved to hear them.

There was an article in the Yorkshire Post two or three weeks ago, that observers at Spurn Point recorded large flocks of Swifts heading out to sea, which makes their migration back to Africa around six weeks early by my reckoning. They are always the last of the Hirundines to arrive and the first to depart these shores but maybe they haven't had such a good time here this year, food and weather wise.

There hasn't been many Martins and Swallows around either. I used to always sit in the garden after tea watching them swooping around feeding but this year there have only been a few overhead, not the huge parties of previous years.
Maybe it's due to the lack of flying insects...not great quantities of those either, so far.
I have really missed having them around!
Cheers.

[Nature's Babe]

Elaine global warming is having some weird effects, my pear tree blossomed in spring, then when those pears grew to large plum size the tree blossomed again at the tips of the branches, and is producing a few pears now from the second lot of blossom as well as the spring ones.