Natural Selection

I thought the presumed Pallid Swift might have roosted on the eastern face of St John’s clocktower. I spoke to Jane about it and we agreed I should go and have a look first thing in the morning in case this was correct.

I was in St John’s Square at 6.30 for dawn. It was still dark, so I went to my office and grabbed a coffee. As it got a little lighter I was thinking this was a futile effort when a small bird dropped from half way up the north face of the clocktower. Right assumption, wrong clockface – no wonder I couldn’t see it in the gloom last night.

A minute or so later the swift came back over the square. I was hoping it would stay a while, but grabbed some initial video.

Unfortunately as soon as I had taken this it drifted out of view over the Winter Gardens roof and didn’t return. Another birder Ellen had come to see if it had roosted, and had also seen it. It was all over in a couple of minutes. I had hoped the bird would linger for an hour or two but it wasn’t to be.

I guess I am going to repeat yesterday in summing this up. It still smarts a bit that I couldn’t clinch the identification. On the other hand it was thrilling to see a bird likely displaced from Southern Europe or Africa briefly wheeling through the sky with Blackpool Tower as a backdrop. It’s not all about pinning names on things and names in rarity reports, though that’s still important to me…