Ingham’s W RLD
SWALLOWS swooping low over a field, house martins building mud cup nests under the eaves and swifts screaming overhead are all heartwarming sights and sounds of summer. But spare a thought for these graceful, hyperactive birds. Locked in a lifetime pursuit of insects, they have chosen one of the toughest lifestyles of all – to be a long distance migrant.
Britain’s swallows winter 6,000 miles away in South Africa, swifts wing it down to Mozambique and house martins, well, no one is really sure where they go but probably the Congo.
A Durham University study says these globetrotters are being squeezed here on their breeding grounds by climate change and in Africa on their wintering grounds by loss of habitat to urban sprawl, housing or farming.
Throw in the perils on migration of hunting and crossing the Sahara and they really are up against it.
This may help explain the catastrophic declines of other transcontinental migrants such as turtle doves (down 98 per cent since
1970) and our head chorister, the nightingale (down 62 per cent).
Short-distance migrants, such as blackcaps and chiffchaffs, which winter around the Med but are increasingly spending the colder months in Britain, are doing better.
The lead author of the study in Diversity and Distributions, Dr Christine Howard, said long distance migrants may be victims of earlier springs. They are getting out of sync with the earlier emergence of their prey – insects and caterpillars. The birds fly in on their traditional schedule only to find that they have missed the feast. Migrants that come from the Med, or risk staying here, may be doing better because milder winters boost their survival and they can exploit earlier springs.
This helps them rear their young and increases competition with the exhausted Johnny-ComeLatelies from south of the Sahara.
It means that helping these migrants isn’t just a question of putting up nest boxes or improving habitat here, though that all helps. They require international support at every stage of their precarious life cycle including on their wintering grounds, their migration routes and refuelling stopovers.
One swallow may not make a summer, but a summer without one would be the bleakest ever.
HEDGEHOGS are officially vulnerable to extinction so it was good to see a lifeline near Harrogate last week.
At the Royal Horticultural Society’s Harlow Carr site, there is a Hedgehog Street garden designed to help Mrs Tiggywinkle. It included holes the side of CDs at the wall’s base – wide enough for hogs to get through and find a mate.
GREEN TIP: Use disposable wooden cutlery – not plastic – in your picnic.
T. REX suffered from back trouble. The giant dinosaur was about 40ft long and, say Bonn University experts, prone to a slipped disc. They tell Scientific Reports modern reptiles have stable ball-and-socket joints but dinosaurs’ were more like humans’ – much less reliable.
SAYING it with flowers has taken a green twist. I have two pencils which, when they’re finished, I can plant in a pot where they’ll turn into basil and salvia.
About 26 million Sprout Pencils have been sold worldwide, with Michelle Obama a fan. The top has a capsule with seeds. Unlike ballpoint pens, there’s no plastic.
MY favourite insect hovered by our verbena this week in pursuit of nectar. It was a hummingbird hawk-moth, up from as far away as North Africa. Tonight and tomorrow night Butterfly Conservation would like your sightings for its Moth Night. Lure them in with a light or by sugarcoating a tree trunk or fence post with treacle, sugar and ale.
Look out for a yellow Brimstone or a red, cream and black Jersey Tiger (left).
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Advice at butterfly-conservation.org