After a slow spring, Stephen Moss’s favourite summer visitors have all returned to Somerset – cuckoo, swift, hobby and a surprise redstart
Sometimes birds appear when you least expect them. One evening towards the end of April I was driving my son to football training when the first swifts of the year zoomed past – low as fighter jets, heading due north.
On the way back, I thought I’d stop to see if there were any more. No swifts, but a real surprise, heralded by a flash of orange, as a small brown bird flew into a hawthorn. A lift of the binoculars confirmed my hunch – a female redstart, flicking her russet tail before plunging deep into the foliage, never to be seen again.
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Source: Guardian Environment