A few days ago we had 48 hours of non-stop torrential rain, made even worse by ferocious winds as well. This must have had a terrible effect on the local Swifts. I don't see how they could possibly have caught enough insects to feed themselves, let alone their chicks. We've got two nests up at the top of the street, and I've not seen any Swifts visiting them since. There's been an occasional sighting of one or two, but not at the nests. But that could just be that I'm looking when they're away ... who knows ? And as I'm writing this, more of the same is happening .. the attic windows are getting a right bashing from the yet-again-torrential rain, and the wind is howling around the chimneys. It's so ferocious that I haven't walked down to the bottom of the garden to look at the rain gauge. In the UK, Swifts only have about 100 days to get everything done. It doesn't look good. On the other hand, yesterday I walked past a house which had 3 pairs of House Martins zipping in and out of their nests as happy as Larry. So they seem to have managed OK. So maybe those Swifts will too. Maybe they've had to travel further to sheltered pools and lakes to get a more reliable source of insects, and are therefore getting back to the nests at longer intervals and therefore I'm not seeing them. Maybe. Hopefully. But here's a bit of good news that I found in "Swifts in a Tower " which I have just plucked out of my "AMAZING PYRAMID OF BIRD BOOKS" .... it's still getting amazinger every day ... "Here then, is another adaptation of the young Swift. If left without food, a nestling song-bird dies after a few hours, but a nestling Swift can survive for several days or even weeks. This is partly because a young Swift stores much fat under the skin when food is plentiful and uses this when it has to starve. In addition, a young Swift greatly cuts down its activity when short of food. The nestling Swift can starve for several days, even when it first hatches. In the tower, one nestling was deserted by its parents, so it was never fed, and it was also left cold and unbrooded. To our surprise, it was still alive 48 hours later, and it may have survived for another full day, though not more. Presumably it subsisted on the nourishment remaining internally in the yolk-sac, and this must be a valuable asset for nestling Swifts which happen to hatch in a spell of bad weather." Phew ! That's good news, of a sort. But as the rain outside gets fiercer and torrential-er, and the wind gets ferocious-er, I'm still a bit pessimistic. Especially as the next few days won't be much different. ... and now, the sing-along-with-Taylor-Swift version ..so,er, sing along ...
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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