Swifts in the belfry

 

Greetings!   Often when I look up into the sky around this time I marvel at the dexterous flight of our new arrivals, the swallows who skim across the surface of the lake feeding on the hatch. Then I pause to ask myself whether they might be swifts for, however much I dredge deep into my inadequate avian knowledge, in the excitement of flight I often forget which is which. However, I must try harder because, on our Norman church which neighbours The Mill, three swift nesting boxes have been installed along with a swift caller.   Swifts, though similar in appearance to swallows and house martins, are in fact not related to either, their physical resemblance due to convergent evolution. Swifts are, in fact, related to hummingbirds. Ill adapted to life on the ground they do not like to do anything other than fly, spending as much as ten months of each year on the wing, drinking, eating, sleeping and mating only coming to ground for nesting and rearing. In a lifetime, that can often be a decade or longer, a swift will fly millions of miles, capable of 60mph plus.     St Andrews Church, Nether Wallop

 

The number of swifts which arrive in Britain from May to August from southern Africa, is fast declining; the Hampshire population has halved this century. As we all know the decline in many bird populations is a common theme with the reasons often complex and only partially understood. Much of this can be said of swifts, though it does seem certain that modern houses and the modernisations of buildings generally, is reducing the availability of nesting sites as gaps and holes disappear from buildings in the name of progress. Hence the swift boxes.   The swift caller is an esoteric addition to the box, small speakers positioned above and below, connected to a playing device that emits swift nesting calls. It seems slightly bonkers but as you will see from the photo last year the swifts fell for it enough to check out the church, though it was too late in the season for nesting. Swifts are, apparently, loyal to nesting sites so it seems a distinct possibly that they might return this year to actually raise some young.   If you are interested in a box of your own check out the Hampshire Swifts which has plenty or general information or the shopping page of Swift Conservation.

 

 

His name is Bob!   I have found out the origin of our Indian Runner Duck who has a name – Bob! It seems a villager just upstream incubated four Runner eggs producing three females and one male, our Mr Bob. Sadly, a night time raid by either a fox or otter (my money is on the latter as we have three at present) saw all three females killed at which point Bob fled, adopting two mallards, presumably not the ones who attacked him, as mates.   Bob, named by the lady that reared him, now divides his time chugging up and down the Brook, the lure of fish pellets our end and proper duck food back at his birth home.

 

A duck named Bob

 

 

Weekly River & Hatches Update   In the past you have sometimes criticised my Update Ahead of Your Fishing trip for being overly generic; it is a fair point which I hope we are doing something to address with the launch of the Weekly River & Hatches update.   Every Friday morning we will upload to the Fishing Breaks web site the latest intel covering conditions, flows, weather, hatches, catches and fly advice for the week ahead. The Update we send you will take you straight to the page though anyone may log in, anytime.   If you have a moment, do respond to the Feedback request (or just send an email) because your days on the river are a valuable source of information to make the Updates relevant and useful to others.

 

Check it out ......     And the winner is ......   We are, though it seems hard to believe looking at the full chalkstreams, in the midst of something of a spring mini-drought with April recording just 52% of average rainfall and March 22%. However, all the chalkstreams are recorded at having Normal river flows from the EA monitoring data and river keepers across the region are grateful for these dry months after nearly two years of wet everything. However, despite these past few dry months we are more or less on track with rainfall of the past six and twelve months at 92% and 106%.   Whilst on the subject of rain I see Tim Mcmahon, Director of Water at Southern Water has managed to scale new heights of inanity only previously scaled by the CEO of Thames Water in that recent car crash TV documentary Inside The Crisis. Mcmahon, pronounced [wrongly; see quiz] that, "If you look at the south-east of England, it's drier than Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas, Marrakech." and that "We need to reduce customers' usage.” Mcmahon seems to have forgotten a basic tenet of business, namely if your customers want the only product you sell it is probably a good an idea to sell as much of it as you can.   Aside from that Economics 101 lesson his bizarre comparison forgets the basic fact that we have thirty two inches of rain each year in the south of which only six inches is required to fulfil our water needs. He goes on to say, rather threateningly, “Otherwise [without the reduction] we will have to put other investments in place, which will not be good for our customers and might not be the best thing for the environment." Heaven forbid that a water company might build a reservoir, fix leaky pipes, create a water grid or invest in desalination.   Enough of that for now, in more cheerful news we have an April winner for the feedback draw. It was a hard start to the month with not much showing or happening but as the days ticked on things improved with Grannom and Hawthorn the stand out patterns. Well done to Tom Rogers who wins the flies to use in May from our vice master, Nigel Nunn.     The winner with his Shawford Park fish

 

Quiz   The usual random collection of questions inspired by the events that took place on this date in history or topics in the Newsletter.   1)     How many red balls are there on a standard snooker table at the start of a frame? a: 10  b: 12  c: 15   2)     Who wrote Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726?   3)     Which is the driest: Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas or Marrakech?   Answers are at the bottom of this Newsletter.

 

Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

1)     c: 15 2)     Jonathan Swift 3)     Marrakech at 11 inches average per year. Sydney 46 inches, Istanbul 17 inches and Dallas 35 inches.

 

Duck wars

 

Dear Simon, Mallards might look cute but they are in many respects, horrid bullies. I often see a group of four or five drakes ganging up, to use the polite phrase, on a single hen. Stones. Shouting. Waving arms. They seem immune to all my attempts at moderating their behaviour though last week I did provide some sort of salvation to our Indian Runner duck who fell in with a bad crowd. As I told you last time we have a new resident here at Nether Wallop Mill, a flightless Indian Runner duck who has appeared from who knows where. He (or maybe she) is the weirdest of birds, a bit of a waddling fool but he seemed to have slotted into the duck community fully versed in the feeding times of the trout successfully competing with them, and other ducks, at pellet time. However not everyone, it seems, cared for him. The Murdering Mallards (Note guide Malcolm getting in some sneaky casting practice!)

One day last week there was a terrific commotion in one of the side streams; frantic quacking, smashing of water and the thrashing of wings. Following the noise I saw our Indian Runner pinned by two drake mallards against the hatch at the end of the stream. One had him by the neck and the other seemed intent on drowning him. Would they have succeeded? I do not know but my intervention separated the trio though the mallards took every bit of my human persuasion to quit the fight. Why did they attack? Well, mallards are famous for their aggression both at breeding time around now and generally when anyone competes with them for food. For a few days they seem to have succeeded, Indian Runner disappearing but I am pleased to say he is back with duck harmony restored, the fight apparently forgotten as they all contentedly  cruise around together.

First cuckoo of the year Up early on Easter Sunday to pay homage to my particular faith: chalkstreams. The forecast was for sun and blue skies soon after dawn and so it was as I left my trail in the dewy grass as I did a three mile circuit to take photographs at Island Farms on the River Test. It was glorious moment to be amongst the water meadows in spring with everything so green and fresh. Not much was moving for it was really quite chilly so I had few companions as I walked until, somewhere a little way away, the sound of a cuckoo came to me across the meadows.

Common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) Cuckoos, migrants to these lands, once common, are increasingly rare even to hear let alone see; in my entire life I have only once knowingly seen one. But back to Sunday: 20/April seemed early to me for a southern England cuckoo so not being much of an ornithologist I called on Mr Google back at home. I never knew but apparently 14/April St. Tiburtius Day, he being a Christian martyr buried on this day, marks the date you might traditionally first hear the cuckoo song though the date will be later the further north you live. At the other end of the cuckoo British residency is 24/June, St. John the Baptist's Day, when the last cuckoo will depart for their sub-Saharan African home. The reasons for the decline in the cuckoo population seem sketchy, though the data is firm on a 65% reduction since the1980’s. One reason posited was changes in the population of the four main host species the Dunnock, Meadow Pipit, Pied Wagtail and Reed Warbler but they have mostly held steady. More likely is the lack of food, both here in the UK and along the migration paths, with the decline of the overall insect population and in particular that cuckoo favourite, the hairy caterpillar.

Mayfly Thursdays at Barton Court As you will know our fishing diaries are in constant flux for a whole variety of reasons so unexpected opportunities pop up. One such is at Barton Court where a whole bunch of Thursdays have freed up, including some prime Mayfly dates which are available for single Rods to small groups. Just by way of information you may notice Barton Court is closing at the end of July which is to allow an extensive restoration of the river to take place in time for a full season in 2026. I also have a good selection of Mayfly dates at Island Farms, our recently added beat on the River Test. I know you sometimes, rightly, give me grief for two or three Rod minimums in Mayfly but Island Farms bucks that trend with a single Rod available daily in Mayfly and one or two Rods for the remainder of the season.

Barton Court Island Farms Fishing Breaks has a vacancy I am sad to say, as Jamie will be leaving us soon, we have a vacancy here in Nether Wallop in the Fishing Breaks office to fill. It is a full time, office based sales and administration role supporting Sarah, Diane and myself, plus the team out on the river. Day-to-day you will be chatting with clients, taking and processing booking, plus liaising with river keepers, guides and owners. You will definitely have to be very organised, good on the phone and like technology – a lot of the work requires an excellent working knowledge of Outlook, Excel and Word.  Do you need to know how to fish? Well, not necessarily but you should have a keen interest in outdoor pursuits and the countryside. From time to time you will get out on the river and if you like to fly fish, well that is a perk of the job! Applicants should have a full driving licence, live within reasonable distance of Nether Wallop and be available to start sometime in June. Please reply with your CV and a covering email to Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk The Vice Master is back We are not quite at the end of April but it is still soon enough to bring you a sneak preview of our monthly Feedback Draw prize, the truly amazing flies tied by our vice master Nigel Nunn which I am featuring for the third year. As ever your feedback replies go into the draw at the end of that month, the prize being a special selection for the following month; this is the Mayfly selection that will be awarded to the April winner in the next Newsletter.

And on the subject of feedback here is a short video of a little wildie from the River Itchen at Kanara.

Quiz Back to the normal random collection of questions inspired by the events that took place on this date in history or topics in the Newsletter. 1)     What book, by Daniel Defoe, regarded as the first English novel was published on this day in 1719? 2)     Who wrote, in 1909, the poem The Cuckoo Song? 3)     The Mallard was the world’s fastest what? Answers are at the bottom of this Newsletter.

Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

1)     Robinson Crusoe 2)     Rudyard Kipling 3)     Steam locomotive

Check out my 78 fly Hatch Calendar selection