Hi Tweets,

The clouds being down low, so were the swifts, both Black (BLSW) and Vaux's
(VASW). Today I saw something I've never seen before in any mixed swift
flock, a VSAW chasing a BLSW, staying right on its tail, vocalising like
crazy, obviously nettled about something. Both were at speed, and
surprisingly, the VASW seemed to have little difficulty in keeping up with
the larger swift in sraightline level flight for at least two hundred meters
even though the larger swift seemed to be going flat out.

In mixed flocks I've sometimes seen BLSW/BLSW or VASW/VASW interaction,
usually of an irritable nature, sometimes I'm guessing courtship, but this
is the first time ever I've seen one take enough notice of the other to any
extent.

Oh yeah, there seems to be a local debate about how to pronounce 'Vaux's'.
It's confusing, because it seems to be (and is) an obvious French name, in
which case it would be properly pronounced 'Vo' with a long 'o' and silent
'x', to rhyme with 'though'. What complicates it is that it is an Anglicised
French name, dating to the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066 AD, when a
bunch of French knights under William the Conqueror piled into southern
England and became the ruling regime. Over time many of the pronunciations
of the original French names flattened out and became different to those on
the Continent. By the 1800's in England and America, the French 'au' sound
('o') had become a more literal 'aw' sound', the 'x' became pronounced and
'Vo' had become 'Vox', to rhyme with 'rocks'. The swift was named after an
American, not a Frenchman, and hence is pronounced as the latter.

As any Brit who's ever driven a Vauxhall can tell you. '-)

M

Michael Price When I found out that seven of my years
Vancouver BC Canada was only one of theirs,
mprice at mindlink.net I started biting absolutely everything.
-Max Carlson (Ron Carlson's dog)