BTO Garden BirdWatch - Telling apart Swift, Swallow and House Martin 

Thank you!

Thanks really good video ,short and precise .

Thank you very much 😊

We have swifts which nest in the eaves of our house each summer, here in Sweden 🇸🇪 They fly circuits around the house, screeching their call and making a whooshing sound , then turn and fly directly into the gap under the lead flashing at the sides of the roof. The speed they commit to when flying into their hiding places in the house is scary and they always land with a thud! How they don’t knock themselves unconscious I have no idea. One day I might try to put a little GoPro type camera up there and capture their approach in high frame rate video so I can slow it down. Would make for interesting viewing I’m sure.

Very good, I like em

Thank you

Great timing these basic videos. Hopefully getting the attention of stay at home lockdown folk. If you read this,tell someone you know about the BTO on youtube.

Thank you. Concise and clear and very good to hear the calls. Just one thing - it would have been good to also hear the call of the House Martin. Is it more like the swift or the swallow?

Cool

that noise right at the start of the video, that is the swift? In my garden for the past few weeks that is the noise I heard as they (swifts?) chased each other endlessly round the sky about 9pm each evening. 23rd August and they're gone now, but what a treat they were, about 2 dozen in total.

So, I came to this trying to work out which is the three there was around the house just now (they come every summer some nest in the eaves of our house). Here's my confusion. I clearly heard the swift call (alongside other chattering), but amongst them I also Clearly saw some white stomachs (white have extended to top of wings as well, I didn't think to note it) and tails that are sometimes straight sometimes forked (when slow down) but they don't look as long and trailing as swallows. Are there species of Swift's with white stomachs, or do they ever end up flying together? I thought it might have been a bit of a spat actually. But maybe it was just how their calls sound! Or do house Martin's also sound like Swift's? These ones may or may not be the ones that nest in our eaves, there are a lot of them round here.

Whenever I see birds with split tales swooping low over fields i call them “swifts or swallows” cos I don’t know the diff. Now I think its more likely I’ve seen swifts but according to the internet they are ten times rarer than swallows. Come on nature, make it a bit easier!