We’re going to need a bigger bucket
CONSERVATIONISTS have built an enormous 400-ton ‘sandcastle’ at Spynes Mere, Surrey, to encourage sand martins to nest at the nature reserve for the first time in 25 years. Too often, these agile little birds—smallest of the European hirundines—seen burrowing into cliff faces and gravel pits every March, make unsafe nests in active extraction sites because they’re attracted by the fresh, vertical sand faces.
To create the 66ft-long sand bank with its vertical surface area of more than 1,000sq ft, expert sand sculptors were enlisted to make a ‘giant bucket mould’ using wooden boards, which they kept in place for three to four weeks to ensure the structure’s integrity. They hope it will encourage hundreds of the little birds to nest there, clawing up to 3ft into the sand to lay their eggs as they like to do (it’s also a good habitat for wasps and bees). As the face of the sandbank is curved, they should easily be able to peep out to find mates and, once a year, Surrey Wildlife Trust will remove a few feet of sand to deter nest parasites, then recycle the same sand to rebuild the bank later.
‘Sand-martin numbers have plummeted twice in the past 50 years as a result of droughts in their wintering grounds in Africa,’ explains James Herd of Surrey Wildlife Trust. ‘In the UK, the natural nesting inland habitat along riverbanks has decreased as rivers pass through more urbanised areas and under roads and quarrying has ceased, so creating this nest bank is important to protect them against the boom-and-bust nature of their nesting sites and give more security for the population to expand.’