Making itself right at home
IF you think it’s hard work spring cleaning, imagine if you had to build a new home every year.
All sorts of creatures have been building nests over the past few weeks and will continue to do so until they are ready for the birth of their young.
High points over the past couple of years have been long-tailed tits building a nest on a wire fence close to my office, reed warblers building nests that look too heavy for the reeds, and blue tits popping in and out of the nest boxes in my garden. Please stay!
If you are really lucky you will have house martins building their mud nests in the eaves of your house. While many new homes have unsuitable plastic eaves, there are still plenty of places where martins can slap their mud huts.
While it might mean a bit of a mess by your wall with mud and poo, it’s worth the work to have these beautiful little birds sharing your home with you.
It is a shame that some people see this as a nuisance and would rather remove the martins’ nest rather than put up with a little bit of mess.
These birds will have flown thousands and thousands of miles from south of the Sahara Desert. They stop off on the coast to eat lots of flying insects to build up their energy for the last part of their flight, then they head for our towns and cities.
They are a wonderful bonus in your garden, flying through annoying small insects, catching and eating them. If you are lucky you will see them building their nests, which will have to be strong enough to carry their weight and the weight of their offspring.
Both males and females build the nests and they will have collected the mud from streams and local ponds.
Compared to swallows and swifts, house martins are quite stumpy. They are a glossy black on top and completely white below, with a white rump. They have a short, forked tail.
Looking out for house martins is something that the Wildlife Trust is keen to promote. Our job is to create fantastic habitats for all kinds of creatures – but home-owners have their part to play as well.
By welcoming house martins into your garden you are not only cutting down the numbers of pesky insects on your patio in summer, you are creating your own nature reserve. The Wildlife Trust encourages householders to have their own wild areas which become part of a bigger network and provide a vital corridor for creatures to use in search of a good home.
The more you do for wildlife, the more you will benefit from that wildlife coming back to your garden.
So don’t see house martins as messy beggars, they are your own wildlife wonder in your own garden.
To support the work of the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside, text WILD09 with the amount you want to donate to 70070.