Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A riot of colour for the summer
Appearing on the same page as the gardening column each week often means being outshone by dazzling dahlias and iridescent irises.
The truth is, birds are very much runnersup when it comes to nature’s best in show awards, with most having to adopt dowdy camouflage plumages to avoid predators or outwit prey.
Thankfully, the vagaries of this summer’s topsy-turvy weather have produced the perfect conditions for a birdwatching extravaganza as colourful as any herbaceous border in bloom.
Two of the most beautiful birds on the British List – the official catalogue of truly wild species seen on our shores – have been delighting twitchers in their thousands.
Watching bee-eaters is akin to looking through a prism. Little wonder they have been dubbed “rainbow birds” because of their colour scheme that runs through the spectrum: glistening red eyes, orange napes, yellow throats, green-bronze coverts, blue breasts and hints of indigo and violet around the face and wing tips.
Back in the 1950s, only a handful of bee-eaters made it to Britain each year from their Mediterranean nesting grounds. The annual average over the past decade has been around 70 birds in keeping with their climate change-driven northwards expansion.
But a period of warm southerlies led to dozens of sightings this spring, with flocks of up to 10 birds seen in Aberdeenshire, Kent, Norfolk and Yorkshire.
If one bird can dazzle equally in the summer sunshine then it is the jackdaw-sized roller, a flamboyant cocktail of turquoise and caramel tones from south-western Spain.
An endless stream of birders were served up mesmerising views of an adult roller in the Suffolk Brecks earlier this month.
Rollers – the species derives its name from the courtship aerobatics it performs on flappy wings – have become a rarity. The record books show there have been 126 sightings since 1950 but visits are becoming less frequent with, on average, a single sighting every other year.
Back in the 1950s, only a handful of bee-eaters made it to Britain