It seems that many of you are missing your House Martins this year too. The other evening there was just an occasional single bird flying above me as I sat in the garden in the evening – I’d expect them to be present almost all the time and in numbers of up to double figures. And as I delivered Labour election leaflets locally I have seen lots of Swifts but no House Martins above the small town where I live in east Northants.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time driving around the UK from Scotland to Sussex in recent weeks and House Martins seem to be down everywhere, but particularly in the south.
Have yours come back yet?
This screengrab from Birdtrack certainly makes it seem as though the birds are either less numerous or at the very least late coming back – but it’s now getting very late.
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We have House Martins and Swallows nesting but this is the first time not to have any Swifts in our roof!
In our village near Guildford – there is the usual House Martins are nesting opposite us, plus this year there are 2 new nests in our cul-de-sac. Not sure if they got here early enough to register to vote, but if they did hopefully they can help oust are Tory MP (that should guarantee a dislike 😉 )
Adrian – those House Martins are quite blue, you know.
The three nests that I know of in our village are deserted this year. A great shame.
Not many in Higham Ferrers either. I did the BTO survey this afternoon, only one of the four existing nests has birds using it.
I said on the earlier blog entry that I’d not seen any House Martins in North Shropshire. Whilst some did turn up around one farm and some nearby buildings there are nevertheless still much less than last year. I’m also not seeing any in the surrounding countryside, although reasonable numbers of both Swallows and Swifts. This seems to confirm numbers well down on last year.
Thankfully, our Swallows and House Martins have arrived back and at the usual time. Always within a day or two of the 24 April. With the usual Martin nests under the eves facing West having been wrecked by blue tits, they seem to be favouring new builds on the East side this year. Makes it harder to tell if it’s the usual amount of birds, but does seem a bit down.
Only ever had two swallows in the garage so no change there.
Never seen a Swift in the village in 13 years here.
No they haven’t! And there are three nests waiting for them here, two artificial, one that they made themselves on top of the burglar alarm. They are always late- first week of June, cf. next door but one, three weeks earlier.
So disappointed not to have them, however we do have nesting robins, great tits, coal tits, blue tits, ten thousand house sparrows, blackbird, wrens and gold finches. The fat balls are very popular at the moment.
House Martins 2017
We have 9 HM nests on our house in north Norfolk, over the years some have been more successful than others. 2017 has been our worst year – to date only 3 nests are occupied. Five nests had birds using them early in May but by late May just 3 pairs were left. In the last 3 years most of our nests have been damaged by weather or being used by spiders (2) or other birds – chunks of nest falling off, cracking where they join. The most serious problem is the result of the loss of suitable soil for nest building or repair. About 5-6 years ago much of a nearby car park area had different material added to it and most of the puddles were lost. A roadside seepage was used but the quality didn’t match the original.
The general trend of poor weather on the east coast of Norfolk in spring also appears to have caused a lot of problems. This now means that we are into our 4th year of cold, dry and northerly winds which limits nest material availability.
Summary by year
year No pairs fledged 1st broods fledged 2nd broods fledged
2006 8 16 8 16 – –
2007 5 10-15 5 10-15 – –
2008 4 10 4 4 3 6
2009 7 24 7 14 6 10
2010 9 31-34 9 23-25 4 8-9
2011 9 40 9 21 7 19
2012 8 30 8 21 4 9
2013 8 22 8 13 4 9
2014 5 25 5 14 4 11
2015 8 39-41 8 23-24 4 6-7
2016 7 22-25 7 15-17 3 7-8
2017 3
On the plus side our Swallows returned this year and is nesting in our garage and our Swifts appear to be occupying 2 boxes and a house nest.
lexidog73 – very interesting. Thank you very much.
Swallows also seem much less conspicuous here in the Lambourn valley this year than the previous years I’ve been here. There are never that many house martins around so hard to say if there appear to be fewer this year, although they’d be very welcome if they wanted to nest on my house!
Swallows, house martins and swifts all seem more or less as not very numerous as in the last few years in central Bedfordshire. Always heartening to see but very concerning that their numbers appear less each spring. Of course this is anecdotal … as you say in your BBS square round up Mark it’s easy to fear the worst and what we actually need is solid data.