Work on the Sand Martin cliff continued, and in the end Doug & James removed quite a few of the shelves which make up the entrance tunnels to the nesting chambers. The wooden shelves were replaced with black drainage pipes, so it will be interesting to see if the Sand Martins have a preference for the old wooden tunnels or the new plastic ones.
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The replaced rotten shelves
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| Doug inserting one of the new entrance tubes |
Each of the 252 nest chambers were opened, inspected & if they had been used, cleaned out. Even though the doors to the nest chambers were clearly marked, it was usually possible to work out if the nests had been used by one or two broods, as the nesting material was generally in much better condition in the single-brood boxes.
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| Double-brood nest on the left, single on the right |
In the two end sections where nest chambers hadn't been used, we put some clean hay as a 'starter nest' as we had heard anecdotal evidence that this may encourage the use of the chamber. In chambers that had been used, we generally removed the old nesting material and left clean sand with 'drag' marks so that it will be easier to see if birds have been into the chamber. The G section, which is the section furthest away from the path has been renamed the 'flea' section. Interestingly, we even found fleas in some of the chambers where there had been no nest, so are wondering if the fleas have come from birds roosting in the chambers over the winter rather than from the Sand Martins. Any chamber with fleas was emptied completely, and fresh sand added.
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| Fleas |
There's been other wildlife in the chambers, mainly in the G/flea section:
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Giant House Spider (and it was a giant!)
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| Peacock Butterfly |
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| Moth cases....a few were infested |
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| False Black Widow? |
Our Sand Martins probably overwinter in Senegal, and they should be leaving there this month, arriving back here in early to mid-March. We're looking forward to welcoming them, and hope they'll be happy with our house-keeping activities!
