Summer Visitors

Birds that come to Ireland as summer visitors are called "passerines".  This just means that they breed in Ireland and leave, usually for Africa and southern countries. 
The most recognisable are Swallows, Swifts, and Housemartins.

They may look similar but once you learn to recognise and differentiate them you will never mix them up.

We will start with swallows
Swallows are small birds with dark glossy blue backs, red throats, pale under parts and long distinctive tail streamers. They are extremely agile in flight and spend most of their time on the wing. They are widespread breeding birds in the Northern Hemisphere, migrating south in winter.
 They have long pointy tails and swoop down to catch insects.Swallows are found in areas where there is a ready and accessible supply of small insects. They are particularly fond of open pasture with access to water and quiet farm buildings. They nest usually inside a building, so look out for them in disused houses, barns, and outbuildings on farms.

SWALLOW  IN  FLIGHT

This is a swallows nest inside an abandoned house.  The nest is made from mud and grass and twigs, see the little gap between the nest and ceiling.  This is the entrance to the nest.


Next Housemartins.
The house martin is a small bird with glossy blue-black upper parts and pure white under parts. It has a distinctive white rump with a forked tail. It spends much of its time on the wing collecting insect prey. The bird's mud nest is usually sites below the eaves of buildings, commonly at the apex of the roof. Look at the fronts of many of the houses in St. Catherine's estate and you will see the little mud nest.  There is one at the front of my house. They are summer migrants and spend their winters in Africa. There are lots of them flying around the estate.  You will also see them and swallows flying above the grass near the Monument.

This is the Housemartins nest at my house, you can see two birds in the nest, these parents arrived from Africa over the last week and have taken up residence.  This is what remains of last years nest, the birds over  the next couple of weeks will gather mud and reconstruct the nest and will leave only a tiny entrance hole.  The nest is similar in appearance to the swallows nest but is made entirely of mud.

Swifts.
Swifts pair for life, meeting up each spring at the same nest site. The nest is located high up in the roof space under the eaves of old houses and churches where the birds are able to drop into the air from the nest entrance. The nest is built by both adults out of any material that can be gathered on the wing, including feathers, paper, straw, hay and seeds. It is cemented together with saliva, and renovated and reused year after year.

The swift is a medium-sized aerial bird, which is a superb flier. It evens sleeps on the wing! It is plain sooty brown, but in flight against the sky it appears black. It has long, scythe-like wings and a short, forked tail. It is a summer visitor, and comes to Ireland to breed. It winters in Africa.

Swifts don't land or perch on wires or branches, they remain on the wing except when they fly into their nesting place. Their nests are very high up as they need to "drop" out of the nest to fly.  They have very underdeveloped legs which won't hold their weight and are unable to fly from a flat surface like the ground.

You will see Swifts up very high in the sky so look up!