By RSPB Conservation Advisor Hilary McGuire
We bought house martin cups, along with swift, house sparrow and bat boxes, with a small pot of money left to us when a farmer who we used to work with passed away, and in leaving their legacy, specified that house birds, including house martins should benefit.
Targeting areas where we knew there were house martins present, and that would be more likely to colonise new nest sites, we purchased seventeen house martin nest cups.
We put up some of the house martin nest cups through a partnership with Open Reach, where the engineers used their volunteering days to help us put up boxes around the Forest of Bowland.
Seven house martin cups were installed on private houses in the villages of Wray, Caton, Chipping and Sabden, including farm houses outside the villages, and a further ten were given to homeowners to install themselves.
The partnership with RSPB and Open Reach is ongoing and we hope that now we have demonstrated a range of boxes/cups to support house nesting species can be installed (house martin, swift, house sparrow), that more projects will be able to follow the protocols established with this pilot.
