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We are pleased to be working
with the BBC Radio 4 World on the Move series to look at
what is happening to House Martins this year.
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There are three questions that
you can help us to answer?
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- Where are House Martins breeding
this summer?
- Is this a bad year for House
Martins?
- How commonly do House Martins
use artificial nests?
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We
need information for your particular house.
Please click on the button to go straight to the survey form.
If you have other local information about House Martins, you can
send it in as part of the Bird
Atlas project.
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| National map for
House Martins
We are keen to know where House Martins are breeding so that
we can produce a House Martin map for the new national Bird
Atlas project. The aim is to create an up-to-date distribution
map for every species in Britain. House Martins are really
difficult to pin down; although some places always have loads
of House Martins, other colonies can move about from year
to year.
The last national distribution map for House Martins (see
right) is based on information from nearly twenty years ago.
As you can see, House Martins were found across most of the
British Isles, with the biggest concentrations in England.
The real hot-spots from the period 1988 to 1991 are in red
and purple.
With your help, we shall reveal the 2008 map when World
on the Move is back on our radios in September. Perhaps warmer
springs will have enabled House Martins to set up home in
more northern areas than 17 years ago?
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A poor year for Swallows
and House Martins?
House Martins, like Swallows, spend the winter in Africa but probably
not quite as far south. The theory is that British and Irish House
Martins spend our winters hunting for insects over the forests of
equatorial Africa. However, these are thinly-populated areas and
we have virtually no reports of BTO-ringed birds from south of the
Sahara. We do know that, just like Swallows, they fly north in the
spring, crossing North Africa, Spain and France and arriving here
in April and May. Birdwatchers contributing to Bird
Track, the joint BTO, RSPB and BirdWatch Ireland project to
collect bird records, are worried that far fewer House Martins made
it back this summer. They may have been adversely affected by poor
weather in southern Europe during the spring.
Mark Grantham, who runs BirdTrack
writes:
All summer we’ve been receiving emails and phonecalls from
recorders wondering where their House Martins are, concerned at
the lack of birds at traditional breeding sites. It appears that
a few House Martins arrived quite early, in mid-March, but the main
influx of birds was a good week later than in recent years. Any
birds that have already arrived will now have built nests and be
hatching chicks by now, so it does look like we're missing a lot
of our breeding birds.
Keep track of the occurrence of House Martins via the BirdTrack
results pages:
If you have records of the number of nests occupied in 2007 you
can help us to understand more about what has been going on this
year.
Artificial nests
House Martins are hard to understand. Some people say that they
will take readily to artificial nests, saving themselves a good
ten days of nest building, but in other colonies the concrete homes
are ignored. As you are kindly taking part in this survey, we thought
that we would ask questions about artificial nests at the same time.
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This World on the Move House Martin survey
is just one of many surveys organised by the BTO. Some
people choose to count birds on estuaries, in fields or
on our coasts but much valuable information can be collected
from the comfort of an armchair. If you care about garden
birds, why not join Garden
BirdWatch and tell us what happens in your own personal
nature reserve?
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You can also contribute further to the
Bird
Atlas by looking out for birds in your local area.
We’re particularly interested in species such as
Tawny Owl, Barn Owl, Kingfisher and, in the winter, we
are keen to receive records of Siskin, Goldfinch and Blackcap.
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What if the House Martins are on someone
else’s house?
If you want to tell us about House Martins in your neighbourhood
(i.e birds that are not nesting on your house) you can
register to take part in the Bird Atlas project and then
use a Roving
Record form.. These forms can be used to tell us about
any birds you see: any sighting from a Goldcrest to a
Golden Eagle and be contributed to the national Bird Atlas.
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Click here to take part in the House
Martin Survey
If you have further queries please
e-mail
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