Just before the rain started on Thursday we still has six nest of house martins with chicks – perhaps 3 chicks in each so maybe 30 all together.
Since then it’s rained and rained, on two days almost all day. ‘How are they managing to feed their chicks? To catch insects in this lot’ I wondered.
This evening I’ve had time to do a bit of checking and watching. I couldn't see any chicks in the nests. I’ve seen no house martin or swallows all day. But at sunset…I saw three, then four all gently sailing on the breeze, quite high up (‘that’ll be the adults at least’, I thought, ‘but where are the chicks?’). I waited, several minutes passed, then a saw eight, ten, and a swallow! (I though they had gone), then more, so many I couldn’t count them (above twenty it get very difficult, it become educated guesswork). Then more swallows, maybe our three pairs, hard to tell at the speed they move. Then, they sky goes empty again.
It gets darker, more, many more, than twenty appear again (perhaps as many as 30?), swirling lower but at speed, and then the irritated noise only a hirundine wanting to go in a nest can make.
I left them to it thinking how blessed we are to have such fantastic, almost symbiotic, birds share our home and how lucky we are to care for them..and how amazing it is they’ve manages to fledge chicks in the recent weather! At the moment it is ‘fare well my friends’ soon it will be ‘farewell my friends and I hope to see you next year’ Bravo to all of them!
Edited by user
09 September 2024 19:16:15
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