House and Swallow

On Saturday 8th September the team sallied forth once more at Stanford Reservoir. Mick and I met at 03:45 to put up nets, allowing the troops (Adam, Dawn, Dave, Stuart and Peter B) to turn up at a leisurely 06:15. The first three rounds were fairly standard, lots of Blackcaps and Chiffchaff. At around 10:00 we had a major flock of 1000+ mixed hirundines come over. Quickly, we turned the callers onto Swallow and House Martin. This gave us good numbers of all three species, mainly juveniles. Clearly these are the most aerial of birds, so it might be interesting for our readers to see the birds in the hand.

This swallow is one of this year's birds. This is shown by the lack of tail streamers, and the rather duller colours in comparison to the adults.

Juvenile Swallow

This house martin is also a juvenile; it too has duller colours than the adults and the tertials have thick white tips.

Juvenile House Martin

On this Sand martin, you can also see pale edges and tips to the tertials, so this is also a juvenile.

Juvenile Sand Martin

The morning was topped off with a new Meadow Pipit. In total we had 137 new birds. A fantastic session was had by all and we repaired in a timely fashion to the White Hart to celebrate. 

Peter N.