Migrant worries

Peter Shallcross comments that this horribly wet and windy weather is playing havoc with the last of the house martin migrants - there are many in the Wildlife Hospital and reports of thousands on Portland held back by the wind and rain - hope there is enough of a fine window to let them go.  This video link I posted earlier showed them around three weeks ago, an amazing sight. 

We are very much in the transition between summer and autumn, both weather and wildlife: temperatures have dropped and the rain has just kept on coming. The swallows and martins are the most obvious migrants moving south but careful observation reveals warblers moving along the hedges.

It is amazing the numbers that turn up in the nets of bird ringers.   On Salisbury Plain one of them, Matt Prior can catch 500 migrants of different species in a single day.