With the summer migrants already starting to leave the country I had long ago given up any hope that the house martins would return to my house to breed this year…and they haven’t.

However, I was given some hope that maybe next year could be different. After spending much of the last two weeks working away, I returned home last Friday to find a small, but significant, scattering of droppings below the nest on the side of my house. It’s way too late for a pair to be starting to breed so I’m not too sure why house martins have started to use the nest. Maybe they’re youngsters who are now too large to all fit in their own nest – I’ll have to do some research.

I’m probably just grasping at straws but there is now a little more hope that they’ll return. There is a second house martin survey to do next year, monitoring an individual nest – it would be great it is was one on my own house!