Birds on tour
As you wake up on a frosty February morning, it’s hard not to envy a swallow, 9,600km away in southern Africa with the sun on its back. Some of our swallows will spend this very day flitting around herds of grazing animals, such as elephants, buffalo and wildebeest, snapping up flying insects disturbed by the herbivores’ feet. Once back in the UK, they will do the same around herds of cows.
Many of our familiar bird species are ‘on tour’ right now. About 50 species in all leave our shores each year on a substantial southward journey, to spend the British winter in gentler climates. Most of these species go to Africa, but not all. The Manx shearwater flies across the oceans to spend the winter off Argentina, while, famously, the Arctic tern swaps the extreme north for the extreme south, reaching and sometimes circumnavigating Antarctica. At the other end of the
