Swifts in the belfry

 

Greetings!   Often when I look up into the sky around this time I marvel at the dexterous flight of our new arrivals, the swallows who skim across the surface of the lake feeding on the hatch. Then I pause to ask myself whether they might be swifts for, however much I dredge deep into my inadequate avian knowledge, in the excitement of flight I often forget which is which. However, I must try harder because, on our Norman church which neighbours The Mill, three swift nesting boxes have been installed along with a swift caller.   Swifts, though similar in appearance to swallows and house martins, are in fact not related to either, their physical resemblance due to convergent evolution. Swifts are, in fact, related to hummingbirds. Ill adapted to life on the ground they do not like to do anything other than fly, spending as much as ten months of each year on the wing, drinking, eating, sleeping and mating only coming to ground for nesting and rearing. In a lifetime, that can often be a decade or longer, a swift will fly millions of miles, capable of 60mph plus.     St Andrews Church, Nether Wallop

 

The number of swifts which arrive in Britain from May to August from southern Africa, is fast declining; the Hampshire population has halved this century. As we all know the decline in many bird populations is a common theme with the reasons often complex and only partially understood. Much of this can be said of swifts, though it does seem certain that modern houses and the modernisations of buildings generally, is reducing the availability of nesting sites as gaps and holes disappear from buildings in the name of progress. Hence the swift boxes.   The swift caller is an esoteric addition to the box, small speakers positioned above and below, connected to a playing device that emits swift nesting calls. It seems slightly bonkers but as you will see from the photo last year the swifts fell for it enough to check out the church, though it was too late in the season for nesting. Swifts are, apparently, loyal to nesting sites so it seems a distinct possibly that they might return this year to actually raise some young.   If you are interested in a box of your own check out the Hampshire Swifts which has plenty or general information or the shopping page of Swift Conservation.

 

 

His name is Bob!   I have found out the origin of our Indian Runner Duck who has a name – Bob! It seems a villager just upstream incubated four Runner eggs producing three females and one male, our Mr Bob. Sadly, a night time raid by either a fox or otter (my money is on the latter as we have three at present) saw all three females killed at which point Bob fled, adopting two mallards, presumably not the ones who attacked him, as mates.   Bob, named by the lady that reared him, now divides his time chugging up and down the Brook, the lure of fish pellets our end and proper duck food back at his birth home.

 

A duck named Bob

 

 

Weekly River & Hatches Update   In the past you have sometimes criticised my Update Ahead of Your Fishing trip for being overly generic; it is a fair point which I hope we are doing something to address with the launch of the Weekly River & Hatches update.   Every Friday morning we will upload to the Fishing Breaks web site the latest intel covering conditions, flows, weather, hatches, catches and fly advice for the week ahead. The Update we send you will take you straight to the page though anyone may log in, anytime.   If you have a moment, do respond to the Feedback request (or just send an email) because your days on the river are a valuable source of information to make the Updates relevant and useful to others.

 

Check it out ......     And the winner is ......   We are, though it seems hard to believe looking at the full chalkstreams, in the midst of something of a spring mini-drought with April recording just 52% of average rainfall and March 22%. However, all the chalkstreams are recorded at having Normal river flows from the EA monitoring data and river keepers across the region are grateful for these dry months after nearly two years of wet everything. However, despite these past few dry months we are more or less on track with rainfall of the past six and twelve months at 92% and 106%.   Whilst on the subject of rain I see Tim Mcmahon, Director of Water at Southern Water has managed to scale new heights of inanity only previously scaled by the CEO of Thames Water in that recent car crash TV documentary Inside The Crisis. Mcmahon, pronounced [wrongly; see quiz] that, "If you look at the south-east of England, it's drier than Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas, Marrakech." and that "We need to reduce customers' usage.” Mcmahon seems to have forgotten a basic tenet of business, namely if your customers want the only product you sell it is probably a good an idea to sell as much of it as you can.   Aside from that Economics 101 lesson his bizarre comparison forgets the basic fact that we have thirty two inches of rain each year in the south of which only six inches is required to fulfil our water needs. He goes on to say, rather threateningly, “Otherwise [without the reduction] we will have to put other investments in place, which will not be good for our customers and might not be the best thing for the environment." Heaven forbid that a water company might build a reservoir, fix leaky pipes, create a water grid or invest in desalination.   Enough of that for now, in more cheerful news we have an April winner for the feedback draw. It was a hard start to the month with not much showing or happening but as the days ticked on things improved with Grannom and Hawthorn the stand out patterns. Well done to Tom Rogers who wins the flies to use in May from our vice master, Nigel Nunn.     The winner with his Shawford Park fish

 

Quiz   The usual random collection of questions inspired by the events that took place on this date in history or topics in the Newsletter.   1)     How many red balls are there on a standard snooker table at the start of a frame? a: 10  b: 12  c: 15   2)     Who wrote Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726?   3)     Which is the driest: Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas or Marrakech?   Answers are at the bottom of this Newsletter.

 

Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

1)     c: 15 2)     Jonathan Swift 3)     Marrakech at 11 inches average per year. Sydney 46 inches, Istanbul 17 inches and Dallas 35 inches.