House Martin - Delichon urbicum
I am writing this from the sunroom of our holiday cottage in Boot, Eskdale Valley in the Lake District. We have come back to the South-West Lakes (taking the Wainwright delineation) for the third time in 10 years.
Our cottage is a stone built affair with half metre thick walls. The view is spectacular - a rock, scree and wooded ridge line alternatively clothed in mist and cloud or bright against the cold sky. In the bottom of the Esk valley the eponymous winding mountain river and a ribbon of deciduous woods.
A walk this morning discovered Roe Deer, a toad and a huge mixed feeding flock of tits;coal and willow tit, great and blue all mixed in together.
The pastures hold a good variety of old fashioned cow breeds and with them flies and hirundines.
I am delighted to see the tree in the corner of the short lawn area dripping with House Martins - newly fledged and waiting to set out on the long haul back to Africa.
I have never seen them perch in a tree before - the swallows are collecting on the top wire of the fence in a nearby cow pasture but the Martins seem to collect in the tree every hour or so before heading out again to fatten up. Even in the misty Lakeland weather they seem to be content hawking for insects at 5-20 m The swallows are buzzing the ground but the martins seem more to cruise around in loose flocks at tree height or more.
House Martin, Delichon urbicum
Boot, Eskdale, Cumbria
22 August 2018
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