Summer Visitors
About 60 species are mainly summer visitors which breed in Britain but winter further south, mainly in Africa. A large number of these are insectivores such as warblers, flycatchers and Common Cuckoo, as would be expected from the scarcity of insects in British winters.
Several seabirds move out to sea after breeding, and terns and some auks are absent during the winter months.
In 2007, 16 million birds flew from Africa to Britain. Swifts have declined 40% between 1994 and 2007. Nightingales are down 60% since 1994, wood warblers 67% down, turtle doves 66% down, spotted flycatchers down 59%, and cuckoos down 37%.
Read more about this topic: British Avifauna
Famous quotes containing the words summer and/or visitors:
“Lancaster bore him such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn’t see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
To run wild in the summer a little wild.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, the landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)