Somerset Ornithological Society - Bird News
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House Martin Movement

200+ over Coleford this morning, ±6/00am moving SE

Re: House Martin Movement

Does this mean they are migrating back? If yes, isn't it very early? Any thoughts on why?

Re: House Martin Movement

I genuinely do not know.

We have lost lots of Swifts which appear to have moved on. In recent years between 300-500 House Martins have gathered here on the wires and departed but that was September time.

It did seem a little out of the ordinary this morning hence the posting.

Re: House Martin Movement

Given the time of day it is probably more likely this was a movement of “urban” birds moving to a productive feeding area. Very often when doing early morning monitoring at Ham Wall in the summer months Swifts and Hirundines are totally absent until the sun is up at which point they start arriving in huge numbers presumably from the surrounding towns and villages where they roost and nest – however the beginnings autumn passage did start about a week ago – check out the Portland Observatory website daily reports : http://portlandbirdobs.blogspot.co.uk/search you will see that for the last few days there has been a small but significant overhead passage of outbound birds but mainly Swifts, Swallows and Sand Martins.

Re: House Martin Movement

Not for the first time this week there have been numerous swallows sitting on the wires at local farm at West Hatch. Today at lunchtime, over 25,