Anyone seen any Swallows yet??

I saw my first one yesterday morning, sitting on the electricity wires in my field. I'm in West Devon. They normally return here around the 11th but last year it wasn't until the 15th, so I was surprised to see it yesterday.
 
Saw my first one this morning - such a bitter-sweet sighting.

Yesterday, we lost one of the yard's most lovely horses: one of those really special one, you know? Well, due to it being Sunday afternoon and with the current situation, collection couldn't take place ... so there I was early this morning, lost in sad thought looking at the quiet shape of him under the rugs, when the very first swallow appeared and kept swooping and passing over and over him in his little paddock.

So sad and so very beautiful at the same time ...
 
millikins said:
Not seen any in Surrey yet, usually about another week for us. There were very few last year, I hope we do better in 2020. I've not heard a cuckoo for at least 3 years either :(
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Saw a swallow yesterday on an electicity wire (also Surrey). Cobbus has an old nest in his stable, and there's one in our storage stable too - just need to move his rugs so they are out of poo range!

I love seeing them, so glad they are back.
 
After one week of constant rain on this island in the northern Aegean finally the sun appeared at 4p.m. followed minutes later by the swallows ?. They must have been sheltering somewhere. The hoopoes arrived a couple of weeks ago, fantastic noisy little things.
 
Still none here. ? Hope they arrive soon as a swarm of midges has taken up residence over the yard which im sure the Swallows would enjoy taking care of.
 
Whilst we are on this thread can i just recommend that if you pull out horse tail from your brush that you either dispose of it in a bin or cut it with scissors so its not too long.

I wrote about this last year but in 2019 we had a fledgling that wouldnt leave it's nest. It's siblings had all fledged and were flying in and out of the nest and mum was still feeding it. Eventually there was just one that chose to perch next to it until that flew off. The following day my partner tried to take the bird out of the nest to check on it and it had died.

The reason? Because it's mum had used tail hair from our muck heap/yard flood to line the nest and it had become entangled in it with it's leg and died.

We were devastated and very upset, me particuarly because if only I'd have told my partner earlier we would have known it was okay to interfere with the nest and would have seen what was wrong with it. We kept thinkimg that if we disturbed the nest and it couldn't fly mum wouldn't keep feeding it.

So please remember to cut tail hair
 
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