It’s unlikely that house martins use public toilets!
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IT seemed to be the day of the house martins as everywhere I went they seemed to be around.
To start with when I was loading the car with camera gear, etc, the house martins were all around me.
The reason was that there were two pairs of them at the gable end and both were feeding quite large chicks. Indeed you could see the chicks peering out begging for food in the hope they would be the first to get the next beak-full of insects.
The adult birds were certainly having their work cut out as in each nest there appeared to be at least four chicks and all well advanced.
No doubt the adults already had a second brood on their mind. If so let us hope that the plentiful supply of insects so far this summer will continue until the second brood has fledged and they all leave for Africa.
Fortunately, I have kept a log of the numbers of pairs of house martins breeding each year since we moved in.
The first year was in 1987 and I well remember that one of the attractions of buying the house was the numbers of house martins nesting under the eaves.
In 1987 there was an impressive 19 occupied nests but it was capped the following year when there were 24 nests, the most we have recorded.
The numbers have fluctuated over the years presumably because of the lack of food either here or on their long migrations that includes that amazing journey to cross the Sahara Desert.
The worst year was in 2003 when, despite a few attempts, no nests were occupied long enough to be successful.
The last good year was as recent as 2011 when there were 15 occupied nests. By then I had started putting up artificial nests which seemed to help as that year of the 15 four artificial nests were used.
This year there are seven occupied nests with each feeding well grown chicks as opposed to the four occupied nests of last year. Then it was a long drive up the east coast and the next house martins certainly were a surprise and totally unexpected.
I had stopped at some public toilets and there on the door was a formal, large typed sign. It was asking people to keep the door closed at all times as a pair of house martins were trying to nest inside.
Apart from being interesting, it was also amusing as, of course, it would not have been house martins, it would have been swallows. House martins do not enter buildings of whatever type to build their nests.
The next house martins were also, in some ways, a surprise as we parked down the sea front at Rockfield for a picnic lunch. While there was an almost complete lack of sea birds, this was more than made up for by the numbers of small birds around.
One of the commoner ones were the house sparrows that seemed intent on taking the seeds from marram grass that lined part of the shore. The birds were almost amusing as one would land on the stem of the marram and walk upwards towards the long seed head. The further the bird went the more the long slender flowering head bent over. By the time the house sparrow reached the seed head the stem was in a perfect curve and the bird then packed the seed away as if something was going to suddenly happen.
Meanwhile, house martins and swallows were all around the car and along the shore line and over the long ramp down into the sea. It was bird acrobatics at its best. The birds were just so manoeuvrable, twisting and turning in what looked like impossible sudden changes in direction.
I could have watched these birds all day but I needed to see house martins at another site.
At Tarbat Ness is a cliff nesting colony, one of the very few in the UK and the birds were, as usual, nesting under a cliff overhang so I could not actually see the nests. Frustrating.
RECORD OF THE WEEK
Fast flyer is so abundant
THIS has to be a moth that I saw feeding during the day on a dark purple Buddleia in the garden last week. It must be one of the most unusual moths in the Highlands as it not only feeds during the day but also during the hours of darkness.
If that was not enough, it is also a migrant that comes here every year as it is believed it cannot survive our winters. Its name of silver Y moth comes from the small white mark on each of the fore-wings that can be read either as a "Y" or as a symbol of the Greek letter "gamma".
The silver Y is a fast flyer and a regular migrant to Britain from the continent. Very large numbers arrive between spring and late summer and the actual numbers are just staggering.
One entomologist down south recorded over 7,000 silver Y moths in a single night trapped with a light trap. That is a huge number by any standards.
The early migrants of the silver Y give rise to a second generation in the autumn when the moths become even more abundant.
One fascinating feature of this moth is that when the male moths are at rest they have tufts of hairs on their abdomen that stand out and these release a chemical that attracts the females.
