Rosebush Swifts

We have just been camping at Rosebush for a few nights, all the better to do our northern county tetrads, and have been fascinated to share the campsite with a Garden Warbler nesting in a bush just behind our tent (not a bird we see much down in the Dale area) and particularly a group of Swifts zooming and screaming around low over the grass. We were fascinated to watch the Swifts going into their nest sites in the house immediately across the road from Tafarn Sinc - there seemed to be a pair of Swifts in each corner of the roof. We watched them fly in low, head straight for the top of the wall just below the roof, stop abruptly and cling on, then scramble up throught the narrow gap in under the gutter into the roof. Just the same way that bats enter the same sort of place. We have never had such good views of Swifts entering and leaving nest sites before. I wonder of the owners of the house know how privileged they are to have such enigmatic lodgers.

Peter and Rosemary