I never got to the bottom of whether these were swallows or swifts, so swoopies it is.
There’s an inversion as well, but I mean the burds were just magic.
I never got to the bottom of whether these were swallows or swifts, so swoopies it is.
There’s an inversion as well, but I mean the burds were just magic.
Yes – like I always end up calling Pied Wagtails “Wagpies” even though I know their proper name. Easier to say as well.
I think we’ve probably just made onomatopoeia’s (spell check says I’ve got that wrong but isn’t coming up with any suggestions to fix it…).
I think you were watching House Martins (related to the swallow), especially if the video was shot recently. There’s a good freeze frame at 33s to identify one of them.
Swifts are dark underneath with longer, more tapered wings, and migrate south earlier than the others (we haven’t seen one for a couple of months now). Swallows have the long tail streamers which I didn’t see here. And the full pale underneath differentiates house martins from sand martins – plus it doesn’t seem like the right habitat, they’d be near water or soft sandy cliffs.
I’m no expert but I think that’s all correct. We’ve been slowly getting better at identifying a few things over the years, but it is confusing! (Plus at our age we learn something and then forget it again! ;o)
Corvids are another tricky bunch. We call a carrion crow a “justa”, on account of always looking up hoping that it might be a raven, before one of us says “no, it’s justa…”
That’s brilliant Matt. I did a wee image search and I think you’re spot on with housemartins.
It’s nice to be able identify all the stuff we see out there. I got the Hostile Habitats book which is brilliant for hill stuff but the knowledge slips so fast when I’m not using it regularly.
The crags are a sort of crossover area, we get urban foxes coming up from the houses, and an occasion red kite swooping in from further north and everything else possible inbetween.
Including ravens :)