Air Arms Owners Club

Im not sure if I believe in superstitions, omens or owt like that. I do however believe in things that have a "earthly" reason for being.

That said! I noticed we had swallows around four weeks back on one of our farm perms which seems very early. I also heard that beautiful un mistaken sound of the Swift around a week ago too .

Not sure what the bone chuckers would make of this but its nice to see/hear the dicky birds so early in the year.

I was at the range this week and the Swallows are trying to nest above us in the covered benchrest area. No more than six feet away. Beautiful wee critters! I love late Spring early Summer, just the best time of year for me.

Great isn't it?
I've got a friendly robin in work, I give him a few bits of grated cheese most days and he hops in around the stores. Today he flew up on top of the monitor while I was on the computer, he watched me with his head on one side and then dropped down onto the rim of my mug, no more than a foot away. I haven't heard swifts since we moved house, we had them screaming around every evening along with the house martins. Out here though we have more thrushes, wrens, blackbirds and various tits, goldfinches and owls!

My late spring was made by a cuckoo going full pelt as we canoed silently down the River Bure (52.709594, 1.376512) on our sojourn in Norfolk a couple of weeks ago and the weather was around the 20 C mark during the day and 15 C at night.
It is currently being ruined by the single digit evening temperatures in Rugby this week FFS .... they gave given out a low of 5 C on Sunday

Timmytree wrote:Great isn't it?
I've got a friendly robin in work, I give him a few bits of grated cheese most days and he hops in around the stores. Today he flew up on top of the monitor while I was on the computer, he watched me with his head on one side and then dropped down onto the rim of my mug, no more than a foot away. I haven't heard swifts since we moved house, we had them screaming around every evening along with the house martins. Out here though we have more thrushes, wrens, blackbirds and various tits, goldfinches and owls!

I live in suburbia Tim, you know what, I've not seen a Song Thrush in ten years, maybe more. They just seem to have dropped out of the local habitat. I see Mistlers when I'm out South of the Tyne, but no Songies

Where the Blackbird has flourished the Song Thrush has all but disappeared .

we have magpies lots and lots of magpies there is 3 huge fur trees a few doors from me so magpies rule the roost (no pun intended) oh we also have a lot of sparrows.

Here in central Florida, the chimney swifts were about a week late for some reason. They are almost like clockwork arriving on April 1, give or take a day. I only use my chimney as a nesting ground for the swifts (only had one fire in the last 15 years) and counted 51 birds one year. I saw on the TV that a swift can eat 600 mosquitos in an evening, so I let them be.

In the woodlands wile out and about, I had a wee,little Robin land right next to me!, I watched the little fella for Quite a wile, lovely to see and this was the closest I'v been

to any wiled bird,,, nature is just wonderful, Its Quite amazing the wildlife I have seen wile out on the farm and woodlands, even Deer, baby wood Owl's, Kestrels hovering above looking for next meal, the odd swift, and Bats, darting about in fading light.

I still love the Blackbird song when you see them on the corner of a house roof, in full song. sometimes this means rain may follow....

And what really makes my chuckle is the seagull doing the seagull dance patting his feet onto the ground to attract worms to the top of the grass for a meal. very cleaver really to simulate rail fall so worms come to the top...

Nature is so lovely and I guess they love the summer as much as humans....

could I just direct members attention to an RSPB site called Swifts-amazing facts, astonishing wee birds that are thought to basically fly like forever!
mating, eating even sleeping (YUP!) in flight and only `landing` in their nests at breeding time!
fastest level flight bird (the peregrine cheats by diving to attain its top speed) & even an actual cousin to most other bird species, they`re actually different to other birds to a point where the parasites on their bodies are different to other bird parasites! it`s not a long boring read trust me, quite the opposite actually, but, the facts about these wee birds are amazing!

Wastrel, you should have been watching "Springwatch" on BBC2, had a camera inside a Swift's nest very interesting information, I for one didn't know that a swift once fledged doesn't touch down for two years till ready to mate, as for the parasites there was footage of the horrible beasties crawling over the hen while she was sitting on eggs. Pity the series finished last night

Atb
Bob

I see there is hell on today about Spring watch last night. A blood thirsty Tawney Owl killed a chick (probably the weakest/smallest, I didnt see it) , pulled it to bits and fed it to its siblings Shock horror eh

Just shows that a large proportion of folk out there are sooooooooo out of touch with nature. As KJ would say "Nature is Red in both tooth and claw"

I bet a lot of these fools think that mammy and daddy bird give all their wee offspring names and read them bed time stories! Get a grip FFS!