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moves16th Jul 2026Moves
Most wildlife recording across the year involves transients. Birds/ species en route, visible and then invisible, heard and then lost.
Today was a case in point. For weeks there have been no records of common terns on, or over the eyot. Today, as dawn resigned its ownership of the day, there was one, puncturing the torpid river surface. Out came small fry, as the tern worked its way languidly downstream.
Swifts, seemingly avoiding the east end of town, were also skimming the surface: breaks in the mirror rippling outwards. Assuming this was drinking, rather than scooping insect debris off the very top. Either way, each of four swifts took it in turn to dent the surface, followed by a swallow. Very much a la mode?
Where Cetti's warblers once deafened the riverside, there is nothing, not even in the mist nets set up to sample the bigamous population. Gone, perhaps to other locations. The eyot ringer suggests that sedge warblers are on passage, and reed warbler retraps suggest the same. From now on it is hard to be certain who belongs where. Life moves on |
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