Saturday 26 May 2018

St Govan's Head - a possible Alpine Swift?

After quite a good mothing session with Robin Taylor and Paul Culyer, we bumped into Graham Clark and Lynne Houlston (Castlemartin Range Rangers) at Stack Rocks at lunch-time. Graham mentioned seeing a swift that had puzzled him near St Govan's Head this morning.

It was flying in a loose group of typical swifts that breed there but this one had a white belly and a dark brown breast-band! His general description very much suggested to us that he could have seen an Alpine swift, a bird we have become familiar with breeding in the massive limestone sea-cliffs in the Cape St Vicente/Sagres area of southern Portugal. Graham is unfamiliar with that species but well used to seeing the summer resident common swifts along the Castlemartin coast.

We had to undertake breeding seabird and bee counts several km away so couldn't get down to St Govan's Head at the time but had a look there later in the afternoon. We saw 6 of the local swifts but nothing there that was unusual. If there is an Alpine swift hanging around with the local swifts then it could possibly turn up anywhere along >10km of the Limestone coastline e.g. between Stack Rocks and Stackpole Head where common swifts are resident at this time of year. One to look out for over the Bank Holiday period perhaps?