CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
@bax, are we allowed to trade the perpetual April* shower experience which we had this winter for a real winter such as those experienced by our Scandinavian cousins? If so I'll take 6 months please.
*obviously an especially poor name for them it (sic) year.
six months norge winter ?!
i'd be wanting nightly aurora borealis thrown in
Pair of very boisterous house martins near the gun emplacements on Meadowhead Farm.
Never seen them before swallows before. All change.
Norman Cook has been importing them in his drive to promote his early work with Paul Heaton (the famous tours by bicycle between pubs Guy)
OK it's the 4th of May. Personal folklore puts the first swift somewhere in the next seven days.
Cue a week of noticing all the floaters in my vitreous humour as I stare at the sky...
@Ps and the screeching I hear in my ears that is just background noise?
Ah yes. The floaters and the starlings on the wind-up.
I saw a swift flying low over the grass between gigantic blocks of flats at Newhaven on Saturday. It did make me happy.
EDIT: At least I thought it was a swift. I'm not a bird expert. Maybe it was a swallow.
@Rob by the laws of IWRATS it cannot have been a swift as it was before May4th, swallow, house martin or v unlikely Sand Martin but not a Swift
This thread is about the Watching and the Joy, not the binomials.
Swallows do like to skim grass, and a particular joy is when they do that round a herd of cows, hoovering up what their hooves have disturbed.
This thread is about the Watching and the Joy, not the binomials.
So not about Apus Apus or Hirundo rustica?
Just Oculus superiora and Joyus joyus!
Swift! Swift! Over EH3 just now. Oh happy day!
Feeling a real rush just seeing it. :-D
5th of May 2020! Deep joy for @PS!
Now stepping outside.
Four Swifts performing above Kings Theatre this evening - a real pleasure to see them again.
Cheers
Colin
The excellent canopy quite empty over EH11. Apart from a magpie way too high doing spirals like he was lost or out of oxygen. Had to get the bins on him to be sure.
Joy for Colin though. My time will come.
Brekky on the back step. Blanket on the legs like an oldie. Down jacket like a young'un.
Turning back north, to my right OH HELLO BOYS! Pair of black crescents in the boundless blue.
6th May 2020.
I think I saw a pair over our street just now as well. Maybe even the same pair.
That is possible @Frenchy. They came from your way. Did you feel the quickening?
Hindered, I'm afraid, by a thought process of "Swallows? Swifts? Swallows? Swifts...swallows...swifts? Swifts.", rather than "Swifts!".
Ah! I remember your post from last year when you first clocked the difference.
It's like cats and dogs. Swallows' movements are all supple like cats and swifts are hard and fast more like dogs. Almost mechanical. Other-worldly.
Almost mechanical. Other-worldly.
This is an excellent description.
Swifts also swoop and dive with apparent heft, rarely getting any lower than the roof line. Swallows, whilst fast, are more likely to flit along close to the ground or water.
I do like this thread.
@PS
Oh yes.
News just in from a friend:
Czech word for 'swift' is rorýs (like as if you're saying something belongs to Rory - it's Rory's - except it's a short 'o' not the 'oa' of Rory in English; and the accented y is held a fraction of a second longer - a nice bright 'ee')
The plural is rorýse.
Where else will you get this knowledge?
In German, it's Mauersegler, as in wall sailor. I learned that as we sat on my pal's balcony in Cologne watching Swifts screaming round her communal back garden.
Allies gut.
Cheers
Colin
In French 'martinet' which is the same word as a scourge or cat o' nine tails.
Sitting here at my desk with the back door open I'm sure I can hear swifts, but blowed if I can see them.
It could be another instance of the local starlings impersonating swifts again, but I can't see any starlings either! (A reasonably-sized group* of starlings flew over me as I rode towards old Swanston yesterday evening, which was nice.)
* Neither numerous enough nor behaving in the right way to count as a murmuration IMO. Just a bunch of 'em flying from point A to point B.
@ejstubbs same here earlier this morning, albeit from my kitchen window. Maybe we could set up a competing Swiftlisten™ thread?
Small squads now playfully feeding over south suburban Edinburgh. To my delight.
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