Last weekend, as we were walking along the coast path, I spotted a bird swooping and diving in the strong gusts of Storm Babet and said to Mrs MW that, from the way it was flying, it just might have been a swallow - but, surely, it was far too late in the year for them still to be here.
I now realise that it might just as likely have been a house martin, for today we found this sad ball of feathers by the side of one of the many paths that criss-cross the links at Littleferry.
When one thinks of the incredible migration the swifts, swallows and martins follow each year one tends to think of the high mortality which occurs as they try to cross the Sahara. I have heard of travellers in that great desert coming across the desiccated corpses of these birds blowing around in an eddy in the downwind side of a dune.
One doesn't think of those which, possibly like this one, decide to leave the leaving of this country a bit late, and then encounter the challenge of a Babet.
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