At Last!
22nd May 2012, Tuesday
A lovely warm Spring day with masses of insect activity - my phone says it reached 23 Centigrade. There was an early gathering of 500+ swift over Castle Water and then 8 hobbys (rather than hobbies?) took over catching small (invisible from the ground) insects quite high up (above). Then the Mediterranean and black-headed gulls started hawking for insects and the sky was filled with their calls.
black-headed gull hawking insects
In the cormorant colony the chicks and adults quickly warmed up, so started cooling down by gular fluttering (= a cooling behaviour in which birds rapidly flap membranes in the throat to increase evaporation.)
cormorant chick cooling down