Two posts back I wrote about whether or not there are very few Swallows around. So, I decided to do a bit of counting whenever I went out for a stroll. The first thing that was obvious was that Swifts were everywhere. After three short strolls I've counted 22 of them. And 5 House Martins. But ...a mere 4 Swallows. But in the process of that, I realised there were problems ... mainly due to that old problem of counting the same ones twice. A Swallow wooshes by, goes out of sight, then another appears, but is it the same one ? Three Swifts appear, they disappear, then another turns up a minute later . Was it one of those, or is it a new one ? Then 5 turn up a minute later... but are some of them from the three I spotted earlier ? Another source of bias is the relative difficulty of ID-ing far-off ones. Swifts can be ID'd from miles away. But miles-away House Martins and Swallows are trickier to separate. when they're mere dots. So ... I've just had to do my best, assume that most of those are duplicates and stick to only counting the ones you know are separate individuals. After three strolls along three different routes I finished up with .... 22 Swifts 5 House Martins 4 Swallows. Not exactly conclusive...but as I wrote at the start, Swifts are massively in the ascendant. What a pity I can no longer hear them. So ...I'm going to do more of those mini-surveys a bit further away. But now ... Noel Gallagher and " Where did it all go wrong ?"
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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