“One swallow doesn’t make a summer” is an old saying, but by the time the air is filled with swallows, swifts and house martins you can be sure that summer isn’t too far away. Swallows prefer to nest in outbuildings such as barns and garages where there are nooks and crannies for them to use, whilst swifts need height such as old houses and church steeples so they can ‘drop’ out of the nest into the air. House martins, as their name suggests, nest on the outside walls of houses in the triangular angles under the eaves.

Prior to the 1800s house martins predominately nested on cliff faces. During the 1800s the explosion of brick built houses across the country provided new opportunities for house martins to colonise more areas – even towns and cities, provided the air was clean enough to be filled with flying insects, which is their staple food.

The birds have an amber ‘at risk’ status
Since the 1970s the number of house martins has steadily declined to the extent that the birds have now been given an amber ‘at risk’ status. Their total reliance on flying insects for food leaves them vulnerable to extended periods of cold wet weather and, as we all know, the unpredictability of our British summers means there is no guarantee of sunshine and an abundance of insects for them to feed on.

House martins are also reliant on access to mud for nest building and, whilst we cannot do much about the weather or flying insect numbers, we can always give a little helping hand here and there.

Believe it or not we have just gone through a very dry winter and spring to the extent that many small ponds and water features have all but dried up. I walk through Springfield Park in Cheltenham most days and several of the ponds there are now rock hard with dry and cracked mud – totally useless for birds needing mud for nest building. Even the main pond contains just a fraction of its normal head of water for the time of year, but fortunately it is providing mud for house martins to build their nests.

If where you live there is no naturally occurring mud available how about digging a small hollow in your garden and keeping the soil wet and muddy. Adults and children alike cannot fail to be enthralled watching the birds coming down to scoop up pellets of mud in their beaks. Typically, it takes a pair of birds up to three weeks to build their nest. Once the main nest building period is over, keep a little mud available for birds to carry out running repairs to their nests.

Flying insects provide much needed food
If a nest with young in falls to the ground it is possible to encourage the parents to keep feeding their young. Place the nest in a strong box or wall hanging item as close to the original nest site as possible.

If young birds fall from the nest, or the nest is too badly damaged, a substitute nest can be made using something like a lidded four litre ice-cream container. Make a hole of approximately 25mm x 60mm and roughen up the inside of the container below the hole with sandpaper to give the young birds a surface they can scramble up when the parents arrive with food.

If space allows, why not plant a tree or two or some shrubs to provide shelter for flying insects, which in turn provide much needed food for house martins.