Beaks full of mud

Spent a very enjoyable morning beside Tunstall reservoir in Weardale watching these very excitable and aerobatic house martins collecting mud for nest building. The water level has fallen a lot in the recent dry spell, exposing plenty of potential building material that must have dried very fast in today's heat.

Click on the pictures for a larger image

A Glass Half-full kind of Summer....

.... a glass half-full of rainwater, that is.


I should be sitting in the garden sipping chilled wine now, not watching rain running down the window.

And this rain-spattered drone fly should be hovering in a shaft of sunlight. Still, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and .....

..... these house martins have plenty of mud available for nest construction. They were collecting mud around this puddle near Tunstall reservoir in Weardale yesterday. Seems very late to be building nests - I wonder if they were collecting it for nest repair?

Perfect weather for slugs too. I shudder to think what they are doing to my garden, but this one was demolishing a buttercup flower in the road verge.

Good weather for fungal growth too. These brackets were on a dead branch in Backstone Bank wood near Wolsingham.

And good weather for ducks, like this mallard surrounded by rain-bejewelled grasses.

And the raindrops do make an attractive pattern in the shallow water around the edge of Tunstall reservoir.


Accentuate the positive, as the song says....

House Martins

In my youth I used to be keen on motor racing and went to quite a few grand prix to photograph the heroes of the day at speed, but I have to say that photographing a racing car was a whole lot easier than photographing swifts, swallows, sand martins and house martins in flight. The path of a speeding racing car is predictable - these house martins just appeared like a bolt from the blue and streaked past, almost touching the surface of the river Derwent then, usually, just as I was about to press the shutter button, turned in their own length and dashed off in a different direction. Wonderful birds, though....

This picture is better if you double-click to enlarge it a bit...