Thursday, August 31, 2006

You Guys Ready?

It is a grey and rainy day here in my corner of Scotland, but even grey and rainy days have merit. I looked out the bedroom window this morning to see this, a huge flock of swallows!
The swallows are clumping up into bigger and bigger groups. It only means one thing, they're going any time now.
Those babies in the Whitelees nests moved out of the nest the day before yesterday so I guess everybody is set to go. They were flying in and out of their old nest yesterday and making clumsy mistakes. They'll get more graceful as each day passes. Now that they've left the nest and that's the last batch for this year, I can scrape off the pile of unpleasantness that has accumulated on my window sill.
The biggest flock I have seen up until now was 34. I blew this photo up and counted 108 swallows. Naturally there were a few birds not in the photo. They flew onto the wires afterwards. "Sorry we're late. We were having breakfast. Did we miss the picture?"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sure is a grey day isn't it?

Yep, they are definitely getting ready for the big trip. Hope the young ones are strong enough for the trip. Sounds like they might have been born later than normal. Didn't think about that the other day when you posted the picture of the nest.

Anonymous said...

I can't help it, the trauma of seeing Hitchcock's film too young makes me want to run and hide seeing all those birds lined up!

Peggy said...

You should see the flocks of starlings if you think that this is sinister!