Than there's some news to report. But of course, and with needing to go to work, its left until now to report it.
Nothing spectacular [well, fairly spectacular to watch, I think, but hardly twitch-inducing] - we have fledged Swifts! I've started the Swift Watch™ - checking for screaming Swifts every evening to be sure when they leave - and yesterday I realised there were a lot of Swifts up there.. Getting accurate counts of Swifts in an urban environment is not the easiest of processes, and with the need to go to work I was only able to give a few sweeps, but each came up with a figure in excess of 100 [none the same, of course] so 100+ it has gone down as.
This is pretty good for here! :) Of those which came close enough to check [The majority were feeding in a fairly tight kettle, above the horizon but over there ::Points:: a way - after flying ants, maybe], a good 50% were juveniles and there were lots of little family parties [[ie. kids chasing parents, going "Feed me! Feed me!" ;) ]]. 100+ is a pretty good count for here; usually when the young fledge you get a jump from 40-50 to 70-80 - though this does depend on feeding conditions. They were pretty close and high up yesterday, as opposed to the more usual 'spread out in several height bands including down to the rooftops' [and thus easier to miss a lot], so perhaps its just a truer representation of numbers? Either way, 'tis nice to see they've had some success. :D
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