Thursday 18 April 2013

Red-rumped Swallow

It was another very busy morning at work ending with 2 hours intense concentration removing a very deep, potentially malignant tumour from a dog's backside. Hence when Tweets started pouring in to my mobile phone I thought there was no better place for a birder to relax than at the local sewage works. I reached the lake at Kessingland Sewage Works at about 3.10pm and the Red-rumped Swallow found by Carl Buttle immediately flew past in to view before flying off. I was assured it had been doing this regularly and after a short wait it returned for another fly-past. It did this repeatedly sometimes disappearing for long periods at a time before returning, either coming in over the lake or cruising high in the sky. With numerous other hirundines, Sand Martins, House Martins and Swallows, doing the same thing it was a case of constantly checking everything with bins to find it.
In its absence there were the songs of newly arrived Sedge and Willow Warblers to enjoy, my first of the year. After standing through one heavy but brief shower I made a move for home as a bigger blacker cloud appeared on the horizon and made it back to the car just as a torrential rain shower hit.
Back home, our regular Swallows appear to have returned with 2 sitting on the wires over our parking area. I hope they have more success than last year when the poor weather meant that the 2 pairs we have managed only one brood a-piece.
In the evening I went looking for Moorhen nests in the dykes close to the house. I had previously found only one which had been started in the middle of March then seemingly abandoned, only for me to find it had 4 eggs in this morning. I had looked for nests at the weekend and found no others but today found three more within 100m of each other, one with 2 eggs in. The Moorhens have suddenly been very busy!

As a complete aside whilst typing this I managed to spill coffee over the keyboard and under the mouse. After cleaning up the keyboard works fine but the mouse works in reverse i.e. the cursor moves up when I move the mouse down, and left when I move the mouse right. Any one any ideas?

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