Latest news with #swallows
The Guardian
20 hours ago
- Climate
- The Guardian
Autumn is approaching – but some birds will attempt a high-risk third brood
Birdsong is virtually over, and signs of autumn have already begun to show: most of our swifts and cuckoos have departed for Africa, and Arctic waders are passing through the UK on their way south. Yet for some birds, the breeding season is still going strong. Birds that feed on flying insects – notably swallows and house martins – have already raised at least one brood of young, and with this year's mainly warm, sunny weather many will have managed two. As August leads into September, and summer merges inexorably into autumn, some pairs will try for a third brood before they too head off to their African winter quarters. This is a high-risk strategy, as even a few days of cool, windy weather can so reduce the numbers of flying insects that the young will starve in the nest. And even if they do fledge, between 18 and 23 days after they hatch, the later in the season the tougher it is for those youngsters. In recent years, I have seen more and more young swallows in late October, and occasionally even in November and early December. These very late birds have probably come from farther north: perhaps as far as Scotland or Scandinavia. If they do manage to cross the Channel, continental Europe and the Mediterranean Sea they have a slim chance of making it all the way to South Africa. But the odds are definitely against them.
The Guardian
13-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: Life in this valley has turned full circle – it's wild once more
On Sunniside hill a lively breeze twirls wind turbine blades that dwarf terraced houses, once homes to miners' families. Down in this sheltered valley, along the lane known locally as the Mile Lonnen, the still air is heavy with the fragrance of lilac, a hedgerow survivor from a long-lost garden. A century ago, downwind of what was then Emma pit at Pease's West colliery, the prevailing odour here would have been a sulphurous whiff of coal and coke. Until 1800 this valley, on the western edge of the Durham coalfield, was home to a scattered farming community, mining small outcrops for domestic use. Then came deep mining, then the railways, hauling coal away to fuel heavy industry, until the pits closed in the 1960s. Opencast mining took the last of it, 30 years ago, returning the valley to arable and grazing agriculture. Now this is a recovering landscape of gentle undulations, copses, hedges and drystone walls, crisscrossed by footpaths. It has been our 'local patch' these past 50 years, a three-mile circular walk from our front door. Not, perhaps, a spot where an artist might choose to set up an easel, but a canvas for nature to colour in between outlines sketched by old lanes and surviving trees and hedges. Today, the swallows are back, skimming across pastures as we walk uphill towards the site of the former White Lea colliery, with distant views of Weardale's fells. There are alarm calls from a curlew defending its nest against crows and, from somewhere among thickets of gorse, tangled brambles, hawthorn and rowan, the rambling melody of blackcaps and scratchy songs of whitethroats. On our way we listen to a yellowhammer that forgets to add cheese to its 'little‑bit-o'-bread-and-no …' song, and squint into the sun, in a vain search for a skylark. At the high point, Cold Knot, we turn downhill towards home: Crook, not even a name on a map 250 years ago, a town that owes its existence to coal. We follow the same paths that miners trod, on their way to labouring underground in damp, cramped tunnels, paths most likely made by farmers before them. The Industrial Revolution, turned full circle. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
