What Swallows Feed On

Swallows are now amber listed by the RSPB  numbers are declining for many various reasons changing agriculturing pracitcies in africa and the sahara desert enlarging  along with climate change dry springs dont provide enough soft mud to construct nests and too much heat lead to chicks dehydrating and too longer periods of wet weather lowers the insect life so chicks can starve too death .Swallows feed on the wing so it was quite a shock on inspecting my photos finding on of the birds with what looks like seed in their mouth ,on close observation they seem to be taking seeds into the nest for the young the adult birds can feed their young for up too 400 times a day, so they really have their work cut out Adults returning from migration have been noted recently been returning in quite poor condition and i have witnessed this first hand and takes a while for them to recover from their long migration journey, really dont konw how we can help them but i do know that without the RSPB and BTO these birds would stand no chance at all.

Swallow and House Martins

First of all a warm welcome to my blog this is going to be a start to a journey with photos and words about t swallows and house martins .Over the past nine years i have been blessed to rent a small unit on a large farm in avery beautiful part of kent. This story is about a pair of swallows with interludes about the house martins.Over the last nine years a pair of swallows have returned every year and nested exept last year when they didnt nest owning to the very dry spring we had making the ground too hard to collect and build a nest, but this year things look a lot brighter  for them dispite all the recent rain we have had so it was a thrill to see them return on the 16 may but thats not all by the end of the month they had made not one but two nests in a barn on the farm ,they fly all around my unit zooming to the ground ,in 2010 one flew into the unit and had too wait ages for her to find her way out opening all doors and windows and turning of all lights as the fly towards light sources and adds to the confusion for them she finally exited the building after two half hours wish i had the camera ah to no avail , so now they are going in and out nest and hopefuly see some young ones this year anyway thats it for now until next time