Alpine Swift - Elton Reservoir, Greater Manchester

After seeing my first ever Alpine Swift at Doxey Marshes, Staffordshire last weekend, I didn't think I'd be seeing another quite so soon! These swifts have a huge distribution across Africa, Asia and southern Europe, breeding on cliff faces at high altitudes and sometimes on old buildings in the Mediterranean. They're pretty distinguishable too, being significantly larger than our more familiar Common Swifts and having a distinctive white band across the chest and neck.

The influx of Alpine Swifts into the UK this spring has been unprecedented, so my poor views of the Doxey bird didn't really feel satisfying. Unbelievably, on Friday another bird turned up even more locally! Elton Reservoir is barely 12km away in a straight line, but being busy Friday afternoon meant I wasn't able to go and see it.

On Saturday morning the bird was reported again though, so me and Austin made the trip over. Unfortunately, we'd missed the bird, with the small group of people still present saying it had flown off around 20 minutes earlier. Thinking it would be long gone by now, we headed off, only to turn around when it was reported again an hour or so later!

We had great views of the Alpine Swift, and after we decided to move to Withins Reservoir a few hundred metres south, we had two close overhead fly-bys.

This time I could actually see the white clearly!

Also on the main reservoir were good numbers of Sand Martin and a nearby singing Willow Warbler, both my first of the year.

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