Regular walkers along Ferry Road may have caught an occasional glimpse of a cormorant family either side of the bridge disappearing from sight under water as they chase fish – and then re-appearing briefly like the one above.
But they are very shy and, if they become aware of you watching, they disappear at a rate of knots. However the lockdown and general reduction in human activity seems to have made birds in general more adventurous – as they forage for worms in my back garden – and the dawn chorus seems to have become noisier and noisier.
Or is it just the absence of traffic?
Image Credits: Gillian Roder .
The cormorants roost at Pett Level, and watching them glide in from the sea is a bit like watching aircraft land at Gatwick. But yesterday we saw the unusual sight of a large flock of swifts over the beach, darting and diving for low-flying insects. Could have watched for hours.
Far from being the quintessential British bird “screaming around the village rooftops on warm summer evenings”, the Swift seems more of a rain bird, appearing in numbers in cool, cloudy and damp conditions as they fly low to garner the equally low-flying insects. They can gather in vast numbers in these so-called “weather movements” thus the numerous birds at Pett Level yesterday which I also encountered. Of course they will scream round the rooftops in places where they breed but these locations are sadly diminishing and I have seen but few birds around the town in the last two years.