麻豆社

It's September 20th, but there are still a surprising number of swallows and house martins around. But Bill Oddie's surprise merely gives away that he's a Southerner. He lives in London and these last few days over Hampstead Heath he's been seeing swallows and martins belting south, so wrongly assumed they must be from the north where it was getting chilly. However, it's actually warmer here than it was in London. And in fact when you think about it from a bird's point of view being a few hundred miles further north makes very little difference because once they decide to go they're pretty quick about it. Birds of this size probably fly at something like 40- 50 miles an hour, maybe get a following wind, and think nothing of flying for several hours a day. So, 200 miles a day would be nothing: set off from here, stop around Manchester, Birmingham, nice reservoir, feed up a bit more, carry on and be out over the English channel within a day or two and over to the continent, off for the big journey down to Africa. I'm often asked what's my favourite bird and I have to say swallow, because they look good close up - little face, great big eyes. little bib, almost smiling little mouth and they look fantastic when they're flying as they suddenly turn into something positively aerodynamic. It's also what they represent - the miracle of migration and nobody really knows exactly what triggers them to go, it must be a fall in temperature, diminishing light, but there'll be something, you know one morning they have a chat to one another and say 'time to go South mate' and 'yeah I agree let's be off.' Here today gone tomorrow.