Martins calling for home help

Most teenagers had posters of rock stars and footballers adorning their bedrooms back in the 1970s. I, on the other hand, had a chalky mess of bird droppings.

The entire breadth of my bedroom window was covered as a result of the house martins that lived in carefully crafted clay nests affixed to the eaves.

Fortunately, my room was at the back of our little council terrace so my mother reluctantly allowed the birds to raise their families without disturbance.

Once the martins had departed for wintering grounds in Africa, my windows were spruced up, although the nests were left untouched ready for the birds’ return the following spring.

Sadly, spotting house martin nests these days has become a mighty challenge.

Modern PVC eaves are far less hospitable for these fast-flying cousins of the swallow to site their cup-shaped nests, which can host up to two separate broods of five fledglings. Despite this potential high productivity rate, the house martin is in a decline almost as sharp as the swoops they make over the countryside to catch their insect prey.

Over the past 25 years, numbers have crashed by 39 per cent and the species is now amber listed as a conservation concern.

The enduring appeal of this iconic symbol of summer has seen a small army of volunteer citizen scientists gathering vital data about house martin breeding behaviour over a two-year period.

Participants of the British Trust for Ornithology’s House Martin Survey have given the conservation science charity an insight into the nationwide variations in breeding activity.

Martins were found to arrive and start breeding earlier in the east of the country and those using old nests or artificial ones had more success than those birds building from scratch. Birds building nests on PVC had lower success rates than those making homes on brick, concrete or wood.

Dr Esther Kettel, who is the lead author of the scientific paper produced from the survey, says: “From our findings it is clear that one of the simplest ways to help house martins in the short term is to provide artificial nesting cups.

“This can save around 10 days of nest-building time, giving martins that use them a head start on the breeding season.”

Modern PVC eaves make it harder for birds to build nests