Adelaide Swiftlets

Dear All

Riding my bike last night along the River Torrens in the centre of town joy past the new walk bridge that connects the CBD with the Adelaide Oval (world’s best cricket ground) I happened to look up and saw 100 + small rapidly darting about swift-like birdies high in the sky. A few drifted lower but some were very high as to be almost invisible. No binoculars of course! And hard to see anything other than their outlines (silhouettes) and the style in how they flew.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Malaysia or the last few years and usually afterwork lay by the pool (well someone has to do it) at the resort (golf courses, lakes trees etc that attracted birds insects etc) and more often as not laying back in the deck chair would watch hundreds if not thousands of swifts and swiftlets continually in the skies above. Swifts (long glides, few wing beats and larger), so it wasn’t swifts I saw here, not Swallows (no forked tails), Maybe Martins but didn’t ring a bell. My initial thought were these are so similar to the Swiftlets I encountered daily in the skies above KL.

Field guides don’t have swiftlets this far south so maybe Martins after all. However with the rain event in eastern states anything is possible when it comes to bird biogeography . I’d be interested if others have seen them and you ideas.

They didn’t have a Martin outline or flight pattern as far as I can recollect.

Anyway, riding bikes does things to your brain they say

Regards

Chris Shaw
seashore@internode.on.net
+61 409 675912

www.ararelitus.com

After the game, the King and the Pawn go into the same box. – Italian proverb