SwallowThe last few Barn Swallows, bound for breeding areas in the farthest reaches of the Northern Hemisphere are, in these last few days of April, passing Mount Meru. This is three degrees South of the Equator. Most mornings we see them flickering overhead in ones and twos, occasionally in groups of up to six or seven. It looks like they are heading straight for the base of the misty blue volcano, whose amazing exploded cone surges fully three thousand metres upwards, above the gentle undulations of East Africa's plateau, here at an average elevation of 1300 metres.
Barn Swallows
Rustica Lost?
Movement from afar; Beesley's update
Arusha 25 September: Some more Palearctic birds arriving. European Bee-eaters were reliably heard over Magongo-Kisongo on September 18 and there was a small flock over Momella on 19/9. As I write this note three central or south west Asian Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters – the first of the return - have been looping the loop and defying the ground over this Afro-urban laissez-faire bush garden on their way south. Barn Swallows are moving south east (although in small numbers) each evening through the Monduli gap between Meru and Monduli mountains.
Barn Swallow migration through Tanzania, mid-February through April 2006
In an earlier report (to the world's Swallows, Swifts and Martins Yahoo egroup) posted from the Osugat plain, on the outer slopes of Mount Meru in northern Tanzania during March, I described a conspicuous daily eastward movement of Barn Swallows. I wrote as follows:
Just writing to let you know that there has been the first really
significant movement this year of Barn Swallows across northern Tanzania.
