h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... and everything's right.

Whatever's happening in the world, these two small bundles of feathers, ok, rather smart aerodynmic bundles but still small and still feathered, have been all the way to somewhere in Africa, and all the way back. Not just all the way back to the UK, but all the way back to the eaves of this house, just four foot from this keyboard, from me. Where they either hatched young ones or were hatched. It's a beautiful evening and they're working late, rebuilding. They fly in every ten minutes or so with mud, and have a bit of a twitter if they're both here at the same time.

It's so good to have them return. The builders couldn't put the new windows in without knocking down the old nest and even though I waited late, the martins were still around.

There is a mystery with martins, we don't really know where they go in winter. The very odd rule that the further north they start, the further south of the equator they go, seems to apply to European martins, but sightings of them and recoveries of ringed birds are very, very rare. They cross the Sahara, and vanish...?

coolio! say hi from me

House martins... mud...brain.... whirring.

Ghana - or rather, Kumasi, Ghana to be precise. I remember them! I remember the nests, and being mesmerised sat beneath the ever growing mess of mud being pecked by these busybodies into the corners of the eaves. Yep. That's where they go. To Kumasi Ghana

Rainy season would blast onto us, thundering on the corrugated tin roof so you coul dbarely stand the noise reverberating through your head... and the house martin babies would be there screaming blue hunger.

Lots of worms after the rains

*ahem*

Yes. Ghana.

I'm not sure we have house martins. Hummmmm. Now I'll have to check. We have house sparrows.

We have chimney swifts--they are related to the purple martin. They also build mud nests in the eaves of houses. They are good mosquito-eating birds.

I want some house martins.

My hummers have been back for about two weeks. They buzz us when we sit on the patio in the evening. There is honeysuckle on two sides of the patio, as well as wisteria close by. The hummers love both vines. I put out feeders, but they prefer the "natural" stuff. They do oblige us by coming to the feeders occasionally--for my benefit probably.

We also have house finches and house wrens. Both varieties are very good singers. I love birds--even the ones who poop on the patio.

Rev Jack - will do

Purple martins - sounds exotic. And hummers _are_ exotic.

House martins, quick link -> http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/house-martin.asp

I always thought they only bred in the Northern hemisphere. I'm trying to find a non UK info site for them but I'm running out of lunchbreak.

Are you sure yours were house martins, Wilma? There are African varieties of swallow/martin, I know.

Well, we have purple martins and we put up houses for them on long poles, so we have martin houses if not house martins.

Waz, don't you have hummers? They are so much fun to watch. Scrappy little devils.

Hey, I only skimmed that link before - it has a story of them nesting on ferries. well, ok, not that unusual. But, the parents only visited the ferry at the terminus - the poor chicks were left alone for the sea-crossings.

I suppose it's one way to get a bit of peace from the rugrats.

If hummers are humming birds, no. We have hawkmoths that keep making people think they've got humming birds...

Closest I've seen are sunbirds in Africa. Beautiful little things, but never more than one at a time...

Got to . 2.00 o-clock strikes... and Trustees are on the prowl!

Hehehe. I is a genius, I is...

Here LLWaz:
http://africannaturetours.com/africannaturetours/eng/birds%20in%20ghana.htm

If you Ctrl F, you'll find it at the third attempt.

It's happy ... hour again ...
I think I might be happy if I wasn't out with them

We have had Swifts for a few week's now and also some swollow too, but no house-martins yet, only had a couple last year too

I think the swifts, purple martins, swallows, and house martins must all be related since they tend to have the same basic profile.

I think hummingbirds are only found in the "New World". Feel free to correct me if I have the wrong information. I do know that here in the plains, we only have the ruby throated hummingbird. Lil's area has more varieties than we do.

Hello everybody! Wonderful about the martins coming back to nest, Waz!

Here in South Africa we also have House Martins! The very same ones. They come here from Europe. Most of them don't breed but some *have* been recorded breeding here! Maybe they can start a trend. This is interesting because it happens with other species too. *Some* white storks - originally coming from Europe - have started staying all year in South Africa, and breeding, such as in Cape Town. The same is true for European Bee-eaters ... some are now starting to breed in the town of Kimberley.

Anyways, you don't see House Martins much here since they're not nesting, they're flying around and rather high overhead most of the time.

When it's winter in Europe they actually come and visit almost the entirety of Sub-Saharan Africa, except for only the very driest deserts such as in Somalia and Namibia!

We have other species of martins here as well. Nine different species, not all actually that closely related. We have many more species called swallows (about thirty), some also sometimes called 'saw-wings'. In Afrikaans we actually make no distinction between 'martins' and 'swallows'. We call them all 'swaels'. Martins and swallows are related ... some are even in the same genus, so its rather artificial to make the distinction in the common names.

There's something interesting in the names! Both in English and in Afrikaans, the names have double meanings, one meaning having nothing to do with birds. 'Swallow' in English can mean a bird, or the act of conveying food (or other objects) down the throat. 'Swael' in Afrikaans can mean a bird, or the element sulphur!

Swallows are members of the biggest order of birds, the proper perching birds or Passeriformes. They only constitute one family, out of a great many others in that order.

Swifts are something else, actually! They are only very distantly related to swallows - or to all perching birds, for that matter. They are in their own order, the Apodiformes. This order *sometimes* includes the Hummingbirds, or sometimes the hummingbirds are put in a order of their own, the Trochiliformes.

Swifts and swallows look alike not because they are related but because they share the same sort of 'lifestyle', namely aerial hunters of small insects that remain on the wing for most of their lives. When unrelated species share similar lifestyles and adapt so as to look similar, it is called 'convergent evolution'.

Swifts are actually more 'aerial' than swallows. Swallows routinely sit on twigs or on telephone wires, but swifts cannot do this (except for the crested tree swifts of Australasia). Swifts have tiny feet with the toes just 'hooks', and can only cling to cliff faces or walls or palm leaves.

Hummingbirds may be closely related to swifts - or maybe not, maybe this is still an instance of convergent evolution, since hummingbirds are also extremely 'aerial' finding most of their food while flying. They also have tiny feet but they can perch on branches. They still don't belong to the main order of perching birds, the Passeriformes, however.

Hummingbirds are indeed exclusively found in the New World with a vast diversity of species in the forests of South and Central America! A few species reach North America, some even up into Alaska! But I gather they go there only in the summer, retreating to warmer climes in the winter!

Yet another instance of convergent evolution is the similarity between hummingbirds and sunbirds. Sunbirds are in the order of the perching birds, the Passeriformes. We have a huge diversity of species here in Africa (there are species in Madagascar and Asia as well) and they, too, are nectar feeders. They too are small with long, thin beaks and tongues to suck the nectar out of narrow tubular flowers. But they are too not nearly as 'aerial' as the hummingbirds. They can hover, but for only a short while whereas hummingbirds are experts at it. Sunbirds also don't 'hum', their wings don't nearly beat fast enough for that. But they are very beautiful little birds! They frequently have irridescent feathers of green, blue and purple.

Here in and around our town of Polokwane we have White-bellied, Marico, Amethyst, and Malachite sunbirds. I love them! They visit my plants a lot, especially the flowers of the aloes and tackies. I've also seen them gathering 'fluff' from the seeds of Kleinias and Stapeliads (carrion flowers) for their nests.

Back to swallows and martins! Here too these birds often nest under the overhangs of roofs of houses! Sadly we don't have any nesting here with us, though!

That's an impressive list of birds that occur in Ghana, isn't it, Wilma Trogette! I'd love to visit that country someday. Many of those species also occur in South Africa, but a great many don't! It's quite a different part of the continent, the forests of West-central Africa have many unique species.

Very informative post on birds. Thank you for the insight. We just bought a new spy-glass so we could observe our birds more closely.

Swifts are amazing, interesting they can be classed with humming birds - they're almost earth-free. They just haven't worked out how to hatch eggs in mid air yet . Everything else they can do on the wing.

They'll travel up to 2000km to get food for the youngsters, never mind the distance flying they do when migrating.

About not knowing where UK martins go in winter - I think it's scientific proof that's lacking. The book I have, which is recent and published by the British Trust for Ornithology, so should be reliable, says that of 300,000 ringed martinsonly 1,000 have been recovered, and only 100 of those from outside the UK. Only 1 came back from Nigeria in the wintering area.


This compares to 3000 out of 170000 ringed swifts. And the recoveries there gave a good impression of the migration path and where they went for winter.

The book also mentions that maybe lack of sightings is due to high flying.

The Ghana breeding martins are a puzzle though.

It makes sense to breed at both ends of their migrations - given they fly to find the same conditions winter and summer.

Just got the atlas out, my geography being limited (by O level syllabus to western Europe and southern Africa). Ghana's north of the equator... so, do these birds migrate northern hemisphere to southern, or back and forth over the Sahara?

Hi! No they don't do it like that! The martins (except for a tiny minority that breeds here in South Africa) all breed in Europe or Asia, when it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Then for the Northern-Hemisphere winter they all fly to sub-Saharan Africa. Ghana may be in the northern hemisphere - technically - but since it is in the tropics, it is still hot with lots of insects; it is not a 'cold' season, it is more of a 'dry' season. So *some* of the birds only fly to Ghana (and many other African countries north of the equator and south of the Sahara) while others fly across the equator right into Southern Africa. But all of them during the northern winter (i.e. when it is summer in Southern Africa). My guide says, in the months of October, to April. Then all of them fly back when it is summer again in Europe and Asia.

I wish I knew more about birds. Bird watching would make a much better retirement hobby than train spotting. (Especially since we don't have any trains. ) We seem to have the same few species each year. Wonder how far I'd have to go to do some proper bird watching. There is a fabulous wetlands center near Corpus Christie and I've sort of been thinking about moving back to Texas. But with sea levels rising, I'm not sure I want to live on the coast.

Hi .

Quick post before . You cannot become a trainspotter! And not because there are no trains.

But how about http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/bigh/bigh/pylonof.htm pylon spotting? It's easier - they don't move, you can have picnics under them, they're photogenic...?

Birds - aren't the Ozark lakes a good place?

Anyway, later,
'night Hyp