By the time the autumn winds are blowing, our swifts are usually long gone. Back in August, the majority flew south to sub-Saharan Africa, where they spend our winter months in the clear blue skies of the southern hemisphere.
Yet this autumn, we have witnessed an unprecedented influx of another species: the pallid swift. This paler cousin of the common swift breeds around the Mediterranean, and was first seen in Britain in 1978, when one was identified at Stodmarsh in Kent. Since then, the pallid swift has remained a scarce vagrant. Yet this year’s unusually warm autumn weather across much of Europe, brought by a south-westerly airflow from north Africa, has brought close to 100 pallid swifts to our shores.
Most of these have been seen along the east coast, with parties of four found and photographed in Norfolk, Yorkshire and the Scottish borders. One even rarer species – the little swift – was also seen briefly at Brean Down in Somerset.
While birders are understandably excited by the record numbers of pallid swifts in the UK, their appearance – like the bee-eaters that bred in Norfolk last spring – are another warning of rapid and worrying changes in our climate. As the appearance of these Mediterranean birds reveals, temperatures more like summer than autumn should not be celebrated, but feared.
