Five reasons to encourage house martins!

We have been speaking to a number of people recently about house martins. It has been a case of either love them or hate them with many people not too happy to be sharing their homes with house martins, balanced out by many concerned individuals who have not seen as many this year and are wondering where they are and how to encourage them back. We have been fighting the corner of these plucky little birds as they need all the help they can get, here are five reasons to stick up for house martins!

1. They are amazing travellers, migrating from Africa to breed here in the UK before making the return journey in the autumn.
2. House martins feed on flying insects which does the human race a good turn as many of these insects can be a nuisance to us.
3. Numbers of house martins are declining, they are amber listed because of this and we have concerns about their future.
4. They are the victims of illegal persecution in the UK with many cases of destruction of active nests being reported to us every year, this is a criminal offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 with penalites of up to £5000 or a six month jail term for each offence.
5. House martins are dedicated parents and having them nesting is a great opportunity to get an insight into the family lives of a wild bird, also their cheerful chattering is a great background soundtrack to the summer.

You can encourage house martins to nest by putting up artificial boxes like this one here, and if you already have martins nesting and are having problems with droppings, you can fit a droppings board underneath the nest site. The BTO are conducting a survey of house martin nests so please record any that you come across here.