Is This The End.........

.........of our Swallow roost for this year? Ian and I went to our Swallow roost yesterday evening to have a ringing session and all we caught were two adults. The last time we 'worked' the roost was on Monday (6th) and numbers roosting had reduced to 600, so it didn't really come as a surprise that there were only a handful of birds around this evening.

As dusk approached about 30-50 birds arrived and then headed off north. This is in the direction of another reedbed at the obs so I will check it out this evening. It is more likely that the Swallows have switched to roosting in maize, now that the maize is of a suitable height. This seems to have been the pattern in recent years. An early roost forms in one of the old traditional reedbed roost sites and then switches to maize later on. There is so much maize grown in our area, as there are a lot of dairy farms around, so it is tricky finding them when they switch to maize. Ah well, it was good while it lasted.

 A mixture of adult and juvenile Swallows