House Martin feeding younng.

We are off to the wilds of Edinburgh tomorrow so we socialised with Kanyl today.  Partly because of that and partly because he was born ?? years ago today.  We had a visit to Melki ( Larch Cottage Nurseries Melkinthorpe for the uninitiated).   After that, it was home for a good meal and an evening of chat.

Kanyl and I spent a long while in the garden he trying to photograph butterflies and myself trying again to get a good shot of the House Martins.  The young are almost ready to fledge.  It is amazing to think that a month or less after leaving the nest they will fly from here to Africa.  Where in Africa is not at the moment known.

The blip shows one of the adults feeding a youngster at the nest entrance.  The food will be a ball of squashed insects caught while on the wing.  I don't know how the drop in insect life is affecting insect eating birds but it must make raising young more difficult, not to mention the worries about pollinating our food plants.  We are definitely doing something wrongly.