Surprises galore on one of my favourite sea cliffs

This coastal village, on the Tarbat peninsula, is east facing below the level of a raised beach. Last week the sea was mirror calm and looked almost greenish-blue. Gannets were way off the coast moving south as I walked northwards to one of my favourite sea cliffs. It was an idyllic scene but what stole the show for me were the swallows and house martins. As I reached the cliff, swallows were hawking around me taking the insects I had disturbed on the short sward, where sea pinks grow in profusion. New sightings, especially if unexpected, are one of the many thrills about watching wildlife and I was in for two surprises. I thought the swallows were just hawking and moving through, southwards, for the winter but no, they were feeding young from the two nests in the old salmon fishers' bothie at the foot of the cliff. The newly fledged young were sheltering among the vertical capping stones of an old wall. The adult swallows were swooping past them and occasionally responding to open, begging gapes. I watched the adults and saw they were taking insects below the wall: they started landing on the heads of ragwort, taking insects, and then flying up to their young above. I have never before seen swallows land on plants for insects. Then a second surprise when I saw there were house martins in flight with the swallows. It took me a while to realise that they too were feeding young as, a third of the way down the cliff, were their nests, almost invisible, in a long deep crevice. I am used to house martins nesting under the eaves of our house but never before have I seen them on a natural cliff face. Such new observations reinforce the idea that the more I find out about wildlife, the more I realise just how little I know.