Come September, and the nights have noticeably started to draw in, even though the weather may remain fine and summery. In our countryside and gardens, this is a period of “all change”. In fact, autumn begins in August for many birds; I don’t think I saw any swifts over our garden after the first few days of last month – swifts are the briefest of our summer visitors, but they’ve left us early this year, which is a sign of a good summer, because fine weather and plenty of insect food have enabled the swifts to raise a new generation quickly and efficiently. Once that’s been done they don’t hang around.
Other summer visitors will have spent August stocking up so as to be ready for the long and demanding flight south, and most will leave this month, though a few will linger on into October. Some birds make a dash for the south, while others travel in small bursts, perhaps staying put for a few days before moving on. More unusual migrants like ospreys or migrant terns and waders may turn up at your local pool and stay for a day or two before moving on. Some passage migrants are species that don’t summer here, but come through on their way from somewhere else, like the black terns I once had the pleasure of watching at a pool in the south of England.
We may get to see the odd real rarity, energising twitchers who will travel many hundreds of miles in a season just to get an unusual “tick”. I’m not one of them, being happier watching the sparrows in my garden than queuing up to take a hurried snapshot of a dowitcher or a citril finch. But sometimes I’ve happened to be in the right place to see something unusual, like the red-breasted flycatcher Ann and I saw perched on a rock in Llanfairfechan. This attractive little bird is a rare but regular autumn passage migrant, more likely to be seen along the east coast. Strong winds and stormy weather will increase the number of unusual species that come our way.
Not only birds migrate, of course – so do butterflies, moths and other insects, whales, turtles and other oceanic creatures, along with events like the mass migration of caribou in North America, or wildebeest in Africa. But bird migration is a huge phenomenon, and pinch points where numerous migrants assemble, like the crossing from Gibraltar to Morocco, can be exciting places for the bird enthusiast to be. And then there is the mystery of it all: how exactly do these birds find their way? How do young cuckoos even know to fly at all, let alone where to fly to? – the parent birds leave by the end of July, and the young cuckoos never know them.
Many birds will be migrating to these shores as well, of course – ducks, geese and swans, winter thrushes and finches, and extras of some of our familiar year-round birds like blackbirds and starlings. More on these, though, next month.
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