Friday, 1 October 2010

Raining Swallows

There are days when it rains and then there are days when it RAINS, today was one of the later, it rained all day and often hard as well. As a result it was one of the quietest days for visitors that we have ever had, not that you could blame anyone for staying in. For once I was actually glad to be stuck inside attending a meeting.

Sometimes rain does bring down birds that were flying over, apart from swallows there was little build up of birds during the course of the day. On Ibsley Water there were 2 dunlin and the great white egret was reported. The cormorants were involved in mass fishing, with upwards of two hundred in pack to the west of the Tern hide in the early morning. A single common tern was almost certainly the same juvenile as yesterday.

At first there were perhaps 60 swallow and 20 sand martin over Ibsley Water, with a few more along with a handful of house martin over Ivy Lake. By the end of the day the swallows over Ibsley Water numbered about six hundred, although sand martins were only about fifty or so and there were very few house martin. All these were skimming low over the water in search of the few insects that hatch out whatever the weather.

On the positive side the rain will be filling my new garden pond well it also lead to the first Dockens Water flood of the autumn. Hopefully this flood will not be large enough to spill into Ivy Lake, if it does it will bring our works clearing willows to an early end.

I am in again on Sunday, it would be good to think the weather will be better, but the forecast is not good.

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