HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW....
May/June 2008
Lets pick up where we left off last time. The
month of May sees the completed mobilisation of the bird kingdom
in the uk, boosting the bird numbers to their peak, with the
last of the migrants arriving including the swallows and martins
and the extraordinary swifts. Shadowy squadrons of swifts patrol
many of our urban streets with their noisy, acrobatic displays,
like a military airshow coming to town. Never mind the red arrows,
watching them wheel and dive is to witness a masterclass in the
art of flying. Enjoy them while you can, however, they'll stay
only until early August.
All birds at some point during this month will
probably be sitting on eggs. And there are a few peculiarities
to take note of in this frantic breeding soap opera that unfolds
in the gardens, fields and woods of Britain at this time of year.
There are sex scandals, nest robbings, evictions, and lots of
unwitting surrogate parenting, not to mention wife-swapping and
infanticide!
Take swallows for example, perhaps the very worst
offenders when it comes to playing dirty. Although they make
an initial formal pairing with another, as soon as their partners
back is turned they will copulate with many of their neighbours
too. This promiscuity is not so unusual among birds, but in the
swallow's case, it gets worse. If a male swallow remains unpaired
too long, he will turn stalker, closely observe the progress
of a number of nests, timing his sinister intervention just after
the eggs have hatched. Then he'll dash in when they are 'home
alone' to dump the poor innocents out of the nest, and to certain
death. Instead of persecuting the murderer, however, and berating
him for the cold-blooded murder of her young, the female swallow
will divorce her partner and then mate with him in a desperate
bid to raise a successful brood, despite the fact that he has
'blood on his beak'.
Now just before you banish these birds from your
list of favourites there is another side to their behaviour which
will help to balance out the opinion polls. Whilst most birds
are deeply competitive for territory, food, or breeding opportunities
at this time of year, the swallow does something else quite unusual.
The first brood of the early summer will often help their parents
in feeding the second brood, like responsible teenagers who are
aware they have to help out to make ends meet. And consider their
other extraordinary attributes too. They are the ultimate long-distance
endurance athletes - on average the swift flies 500 miles a day,
clocking up millions of miles over an average lifespan! The mystery
of where they go to sleep though has only relatively recently
started to become clearer. It was a widely held belief for example,
and may still linger today, that swifts have no feet, that they
are unable to land on the ground. Indeed their Latin name apus
means 'footless' . We know now this is not true, though they
rarely need to set foot upon terra firma the younger birds are
able to roost upon the wing, possibly airborn for their first
few years until mature enough to breed. You may have slept in
the air too of course, on one of those dreadful long-haul flights,
but imagine what it would feel like to circle for hours at high
altitude in the cold and the dark....imagine what dreams you
might have sleeping on the wing!
Ted Hughes's poem 'Swift' captures the essence
of these amazing birds....
'And here they are, and here they are again
Erupting across yard stones
Shrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers,
Speedway goggles, international mobsters-
a bolas of three or four wire screams
Jockeying across each other
On their switchback wheel of death.
They swat past, hard-fletched,
Veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof,
And are gone again. Their mole-dark labouring,
Their lunatic limber scramming frenzy
And their whirling blades
Sparkle out into the blue -
Not ours anymore.'
There is plenty else to enjoy of course at this
time of year, a feast of sights and sounds piled high upon Britain's
nature table - such a tonic for the spirit. Make sure you take
full advantage whilst the produce is fresh and in season. To
that end, we invite you to dine at the WildWise table on one
of our many bushcraft and wildlife-rich events.
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