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Saw out first in South Shropshire yesterday,10 days time I should here the cuckoo if everything runs to formI have just checked my diary and ours didnt arrive till 1st week of May last year. You lot must have a tropical micro climate.
Hope it isn't Twoooo black eyes, or anything!No swallows here yet, but when I was walking across the yard the other night, I collided with a rather startled Barn Owl. His mate was fluttering nearby. The G&WCT have put up an owl box in the barn so hopefully it will bring results.
TwitHope it isn't Twoooo black eyes, or anything!
Huge reduction in numbers nesting with us over last 3-4 years , with no obvious change in the farming or the buildings.I saw my first one of the year today.
It got me thinking about their relationship with cattle. I don't know how it works but there very much seems to be one. My guess is cattle and dung make for more insects and as the cattle move around the swallows feed on the disturbed insects. So very often see them amongst cattle and seem to be more when there are cattle about/on livestock farms and fields.
It lead me on to wondering if their decline (as reported regularly on here) is related to the decline of dairy/livestock as there definitely is around here.
Cheshire was once renowned for dairy farms, it is why the Cheshire Cat is smiling so much but there is a big decline in dairy here. At a guess I would say 75% of farms I once knew as being dairy farms no longer milk.
I took part in a formal BTO survey a few years ago, surveying for feeding ('swooping') swallows. Once the research was collated, there was, as expected, a strong relationship between swallow abundance and grazing livestock as well as a link to water (insects again). Very few swallow passes seen over arable or grassland without livestock or water within a few '00 m.I saw my first one of the year today.
It got me thinking about their relationship with cattle. I don't know how it works but there very much seems to be one. My guess is cattle and dung make for more insects and as the cattle move around the swallows feed on the disturbed insects. So very often see them amongst cattle and seem to be more when there are cattle about/on livestock farms and fields.
It lead me on to wondering if their decline (as reported regularly on here) is related to the decline of dairy/livestock as there definitely is around here.
Cheshire was once renowned for dairy farms, it is why the Cheshire Cat is smiling so much but there is a big decline in dairy here. At a guess I would say 75% of farms I once knew as being dairy farms no longer milk.