House Martins, Swallows & Swifts

We have your House Martins @Sheal , more this year than ever.

 

Now that's being greedy @DiggersJo It's good to hear you have so many, perhaps they haven't bothered flying further north this year.

 

We are certainly seeing many changes @Sheal .

 

I agree DiggersJo. The birds are just as confused with what's going on with the climate as us humans.

 

Sadly, the one swallow chick in our nest died just before fledging. I’ve no idea why, it was developing so well. We went away for two days and when we came back I thought it had fledged as there was no activity going on, but something didn’t seem right, so we checked the nest and it was dead in the nest.
So far it’s been a disastrous year for our swallows. One nest had the five day old chicks thrown out of the nest by another swallow and in the second nest only one egg hatched out of 5 eggs and this one died.
This time last year, 11 chicks had fledged from 3 nests.
There is some hope though as a pair are just starting to lay in the nest where the chicks were thrown out so fingers crossed for this one.

 

Into July and still not seeing any.

 

Finally, after a disastrous swallow nesting season for us, we have had 2 swallows fledge, our only 2 from the whole season. Last year we had 15 fledge from 3 nests so this year hasn’t been good. I’m so pleased that these 2 have made it

 

Really lovely, but they better get a move on as the flyers here (martins and swifts) have almost all left.

 

We had 3 nests in our outside store and 3 in the garden shed and more in the ruin but we try not to go in there while the birds are nesting so I haven't counted. We have swallows and sand martins but I have no idea which lot nest where. The original nests are the ones in the ruins and the others have appeared in the last couple of years.

I went off on a road trip 9 days ago and lots of the birds were gathering on the overhead wires and seem to have left but there are still quite a few swooping about. At least one nest in the store had a very late brood - lots of twittering when I went in there to fetch paint.

 

There’s loads of swallows still here @DiggersJo last year my swallows left here in the middle of September. Every evening we have about 20 swallows swooping and chirping over our drive and flying in and out of our carport where the nest is, they all sound very excited. I’d love to know why they do it but it’s so lovely to watch.

Sounds like you’ve got a great population @Obelix-Vendée of swallows and sand martins. I always think it’s so quiet when they leave and a real sign that summer is coming to an end.