House martin – living in garden

The house martins came back very recently (they don’t stay for the winter). They have been flying about overhead and calling. I assume they’re also eating insects up there, which they catch in flight. The house martins are nest building at the moment. They collect sticky mud and mix it with saliva. They use this mixture to build up a roundish nest, which you can see in the picture. They nest mostly under the edge of roofs on our estate.

I was watching the house martins swooping towards other houses and was disappointed that none were coming near our house. Then I heard a commotion outside, above the kitchen window. It sounded a lot like house martins. I went outside to investigate and found the reason why there was not much activity near our house. There was a little black and white bird face peeping out of a house martin nest. As we left last years nest up, there is no need for our house martins to swoop around building things. They simply moved straight in! The resident wasn’t letting anyone else in – hence the commotion and lack of other birds. One bird did get in though, after they both sung confirmation that they knew each other.

So we have house martins living with us again and they are already a pair. I wonder if they are the same pair as last year?