Protect my feathered friend the house martin
souls soon to be competing on local roads in the marathon, into the shadows. But of course, the raison d’etre for this feathered invasion is straightforward. It is about the vital production of the next generation.
Despite all that sylvan music, the most pleasing sound of the week as far as I am concerned, has been the throaty twittering of newly arrived swallows. They are perhaps rather more robust than the sweet singing warblers, altogether more brawny in demeanour. And of course, they fly further - 6000 miles or so - for their wintering grounds are generally in the southern part of Africa.
Indeed, I well remember alighting from an aircraft in Cape Town one early winter’s day a good few years ago, and immediately having my attention drawn to the masses of swallows in the sky, also, like me newly arrived from Europe.
If the willow warbler’s little melody confirms in my mind the certainty of spring, the swallow’s twittering, assures me of summer to come, for this surely is our true “summer bird”.
If swifts, due here perhaps in the next 10 days or so, technically live up to their names by being among the quickest of our birds, the swallows are the true athletes of our skies, swooping and soaring, jetting and jinking magnificently. It seems to me that in their own way, they are also very confiding. They nest almost exclusively on man-made structures and so are very willing neighbours for us. That charming, twittering song, a curious mixture of really mellow notes interspersed with some scratchy variations, is reminiscent of a cheery little confiding conversation.
These talkative cock birds are not, of course, speaking to us but to their mates or potential mates. This is the conversation of avian love.
Most of us probably associate the swallow with the house martin. Indeed, throughout human history the swallow and the martin have even been regarded literally as mates. In tradition, we are told that “the martin and the swallow are God Almighty’s birds to hallow”.
Like swallows, martins are confiding and neighbourly, choosing, like their cousins to nest almost exclusively on man-made structures. I hold martins very dear for these were the birds that lit the flame within the spirit of a seven year-old boy eons ago, a flame that still burns brightly in my breast many, many years on!
But, whilst swallows are currently piling in by the day, there is an alarming absence of house martins. I usually find myself watching them skimming low over the loch, feasting upon insects before I have sighted my first swallow. If not quite as athletic as the swallows, martins are nevertheless superb aviators, recognised most easily perhaps by their flashing white rumps.
But where are they? The winter whereabouts of house martins has actually been something of a mystery for many years. Whilst swallows, we know, fly all the way to South Africa, martins just simply disappear. Fragmented evidence suggests a presence in West Africa but East Africa too seems to be a possible destination. The severe drought conditions in that part of the world may well account for recent declines in house martin numbers.
It is also thought that martins may spend much of the winter-time roaming high in the insect filled skies above the great rain forests of Africa.
We know that swifts spend their time in Africa exclusively in the air without touching down and it is suggested martins may behave similarly, eating, drinking and cat-napping on the wing. However such has been the decline of house martins during the past 50 or 60 years that the British Trust for Ornithology has accordingly launched a major research initiative.
It will try to determine the range of problems, which might be having deleterious impacts upon these extremely attractive and agile birds.
There may be a simpler explanation for it is known that some house-proud people do take action against martins, destroying their nests, even when it is known they have chicks, in an attempt to get rid of the inevitable mess that nesting martins cause.
However, with these “bluebirds” now perhaps in serious trouble, the BTO and other organisations are appealing to people not to interfere with these nests, an act, which is by the way, an offence.
I might add that there is also a conflict between martins and sparrows. The latter show a great liking for old martin nests, especially during the time when the martins are absent during early spring, occupying them and indeed defending them stoutly, to the disadvantage of the martins which year in year out return to their original nests.
So the universal plea goes out: “Please help our disappearing house martins.”
They are well worth protecting.