By Alan Hamilton
Times Online, UK – Nov 14, 2014
NATURE, red in tooth, claw and sometimes rump, is a cruel beast.
Birdwatchers who flocked with their high-powered binoculars, telescopes and long lenses to see a rare Mediterranean visitor to Lunan Bay, near Montrose, got more than they bargained for. They watched in horror as the red-rumped swallow was attacked and eaten by a Scottish sparrowhawk.
Local enthusiasts spotted the swallow, which had taken a wrong turning on its migration route from southern Europe to its wintering grounds in Africa. Word that it had arrived on the East Coast of Scotland spread quickly, and a large crowd had gathered to watch it flying over the beach.
The swallow’s fatal mistake was to take a rest high on the roof of a nearby farm building. The twitchers watched in disbelief as the large hawk appeared, swooped on the swallow, crushed it with its powerful talons and flew off with its tasty Mediterranean dinner.
Mike Sawyer, of the Dundee branch of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said yesterday: “We were horrified. We had just phoned local birdwatchers to tell them of this rare occurrence. Then we had to ring them back and tell them it had been eaten.”
According to the RSPB the red-rumped swallow, Hirundo daurica, is a rare visitor to the UK but occasionally turns up during the migrating season, probably having lost its way. A specimen was last sighted in the Tayside area in 1987, and there have been only about a dozen sightings in mainland Scotland.
The sparrowhawk, Accipiter nisus, is a large and common predatory native that preys on at least 120 species of small bird as well as on small mammals. The swallow, by contrast, lives on a diet of insects that it catches on the wing.
One red-rumped swallow may not make a summer, but it makes a red-letter day for twitchers. Its demise is the second death of a rare bird in Scotland in as many weeks.
Eileen Alexander, of Dundee, was delighted recently to find a rare Australian black-throated finch feeding in her back garden. But the creature, one of its home continent’s most vulnerable species, collapsed and died before her eyes.
“I was out in the garden feeding the birds when I noticed two sparrows watching this tiny bird that was hobbling around. Then the poor wee thing took a nosedive into the mud,” Ms Alexander said.
“I went to take a look at it but it was dead, so I called a friend to see if he could identify it. He said he’d never seen anything like it, so he took it away for investigation.”
As the finch does not migrate to Europe, Ms Alexander assumed that it had escaped from a local house or pet shop.
The body is now in the hands of Mike Nicoll, a Dundee taxidermist, who hopes to preserve it. “It is not good in either welfare or ecological terms to release alien captive birds, and we hope this was not done intentionally,” he said.
The death of the red-rumped swallow at the claws of a skilled flyer, on the other hand, was very intentional indeed. And, even if it is now deceased, the twitchers can still tick it off their lists.
