May’s visitors to our shores

May is the month when spring migrants arrive in the country to breed.

If you’re an early bird, it’s a feast for the ears as well. The dawn chorus is at its peak at this time of year, when nature’s finest songsters put on a wonderful early morning show for us all. 

The RSPB website HERE will tell you where you might see these annual visitors to our shores.

Swift

Also known as Devil Birds, shriek owls, screechers and skeer devils, the sound of a group of screaming Swifts is a sure sign that spring is coming, and the days are getting warmer! 

Swifts are incredible birds, and one of our greatest long-distance athletes. They’ve undertaken a crazy journey to get here, one of the longest migration journeys in the world. It’s an incredible 22,000 km (or 14,000 miles), between Africa and Europe.  

And they’re perfectly designed for long journeys. They spend most of their lives in the skies. They sleep whilst flying (a type of ‘torpor’), eat small insects and spiders whilst flying, and drink whilst gliding over rivers and lakes, taking small sips. Swifts’ eyes have moveable bristles in front, which they use like sunglasses for reducing glare once they’re flying. 

They only really come to land to nest, and they tend to nest high up in roof spaces, under the eaves of old houses. 

House Martin

The House Martin is another aerial athlete, flying from north Africa to Europe each spring – though at one point, people believed that House Martins and Swallows hibernated during the winter in the mud at the bottom of ponds.  

As their name suggests, they can often be seen around our towns and villages, as they build nests, that are known as ‘mud cups’, beneath the eaves of houses. 

House Martin pairs often work in tandem to build their nests, using around a thousand pellets of mud each time. They can also be found in muddy puddles, collecting nesting materials. They often nest in colonies, building nests side by side. 

They mate in their nests, but unlike some birds, they’re not particularly faithful partners. As many as 75% of nests contain chicks that have been fathered by another male House Martin. 

Swallow

“One Swallow doesn’t make a summer” said Aesop, but they’re a sure sign that summer is on the way – and for a long time, seeing the first Swallow of the year was a good omen. 

They’re often confused with Swifts, but it’s quite easy to tell them apart. The key is in their tail. They also have a cream underside, but the easiest way to spot them is by their red throat. 

Whilst Swifts have a fairly short tail, Swallows have a long, forked tail, with thin streamers. And the more symmetrical a male Swallows’ tail, the more attractive they are to a female, as that’s a sign that the bird is of a higher quality. 

They also have a much more darting flight than Swifts who tend to fly much more smoothly. You might see Swallows over rivers, searching out their next insect meal. 

Sand Martin

Sand Martins are one of the earliest migrants to arrive. You might have seen them as early as March! 

They’re the smallest European hirundine (that’s the collective word for martins and swallows) and you might see them perching on wires, sometimes with Swallows. 

They don’t make nests, preferring to dig burrows. They usually dig their nest holes in banks of earth in sand or soft earth. These can be by rivers, lakes, or the seashore, but sometimes they opt for areas like quarries, too. The burrows can be up to a metre in length, to protect them from predators. They’ll return to the same nest site year after year, building new tunnels if they need to. 

Sand Martins are sociable birds and like company. That’s why they prefer to nest together in summer, and in winter, and will roost in large numbers in autumn. 

Osprey

Ospreys are the UK’s only fish-eating bird of prey, and that means you might see them diving headfirst into a lake after some fish prey. 

They’re ideally suited to hunting for fish. They have a special extra eyelid – a bit like a contact lens – that helps to protect their eyes when they hunt under water. The bottoms of the toes are also covered in small projections, called ‘spicules,’ which cover them. This means they’re more adapted to gripping on to slippery fish.  

Ospreys become locally extinct as a breeding bird in the UK by the early 20th century. However, in 1954, two breeding Ospreys from Scandinavia nested by Loch Garten in Abernethy Forest, and Ospreys have nested there ever since (apart from a short hiatus between 2016 and 2019). 

Due to a popular nest cam, they can now claim to be the most famous Ospreys in the UK. 

Cuckoo

“Cuck-oo!” – most people can recognise a Cuckoo’s call, as it just spells out their name. But it’s only the males that make the ‘cuckoo’ sound. Female cuckoos make a more ‘bubbling’ sound. 

Cuckoos are most famous for being as ‘brood parasites.’ That means that they don’t build their own nests, but the female Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. Meadow Pipit nests are particularly favoured! Over a season, the female Cuckoo will lay between 12 and 22 eggs, and all in different nests, though interestingly, they tend to opt for the nests of the same species that reared them. 

Once the female finds a suitable nest, she removes one of the unwitting host’s eggs, and lays hers in its place. Cuckoos hatch quickly – after just 12 days – and soon take over, taking all the food brought by the host bird. By the time the Cuckoo leaves the nest, they’re larger than the host bird.