This is just a very quick blog about sand martins, because I love them and am very relieved to have them back on site! My worrying was justified until yesterday, as there was no activity in our sand martin bank at all - after the previous three years of being very successful. We had noticed reduced numbers of birds on site, leading us to believe that they were maybe just a little late, however reports of birds excavating at other sites was concerning.
However, yesterday morning I was thrilled to see around 30 holes in the bank - the birds must have started either Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning. A quick count later in the day by volunteer Stuart Carlton revealed 32 holes on the go. We hope this number will grow to the sort of levels we have had in previous years (200+ in 2013), so fingers crossed for the birds success.
Also yesterday of note, we had a large influx of swifts, with 30+ birds feeding over our storage containers at 09.30. Lovely to see these.
Sand martin on our bank in 2012. Ben Hall (rspb-images.com)