House Martins

Mainly cloudy with sunny spells, 19°, breezy SW.

In excess of 500 House Martin seen today (I stopped counting after a time!). Main movement was south westerly but at times birds were moving in other directions and it appeared to me that they were moving towards blue sky areas where the sun was shining.

A period of around 30 minutes there was thick cloud cover and no Martins but as soon as the sun broke through Martins started to appear overhead.

The movement petered out early afternoon. Maybe more insect prey where the sun was shining?

Mainly flocks of around 20 but 2 flocks of 100+ passed through and at one time on the hill I was surrounded by House Martins feeding low on the hill and passing over. An impressive sight!

A single Golden Plover flew east over the hill.

Lower numbers of Chiffchaff than of late.

Mammals: Brown Hare.

Dragonflies: Southern Hawker & Common Darter.

Butterflies: Large White, Red Admiral & Speckled Wood.

 House Martin (Alan)
 Magpie in the garden feeding on Elder Berries



from Cholsey Wildlife https://cholseywildlife.blogspot.com/2019/09/house-martins.html

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