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Kate, our Assistant Warden and her trusty team of volunteers, had a rather itchy job to do
today.......
 It was time to 'spring clean' the Sand Martin Bank....
sand Martins nest in the banks of the river Dearne, but in the 2007 floods, their nests were devastated. This led to plans to put an artificial nest bank in place actually on the reserve. Not only would they hopefully be safer, as they would be higher up, but we could enjoy watching them too! So, based on a successful design from Rutland Water, our team set about constructing a home for an expansion of the existing, nearby colony.
 A sand martin in it's natural habitat, on a muddy river bank.
When I say 'team', I was actually one of them at that point! I was volunteering with the reserve team and had the honour of 'grouting' (or something like that!!) all the breeze blocks which had been put in place by significantly more skilled members of the team! The fact that I'm not even sure what it was called and that I remember dropping most of the cement, means that I have no claim to the creation of such a fab asset..... Yet I still claim that my work is the only reason it's still standing!! :D
Sand martins belong to the 'hirundine' group, like swallows and house martins. We don't see them at the moment, because they are in central Africa at this time of year. They are, however, one of the early arrivals back from migration and we will be looking out for them returning from early March, onwards.....
Our artificial bank was used in it's first season! An achievement we put down to the fact that they watched us build it!! They were swooping around us as we finished it off! The results weren't that impressive however, with only a handful of youngsters being successfully fledged from the 'nest holes' (clay pipes - in 2010). So we needed a bit of a re-think...
 You can just see the daylight through the nest hole - and the carpet liner! The door on the building, allows our staff inside the nest bank, to maintain it.
We knew that Sand Martins are sensitive to draughts, so we had backed the nest holes with luxury, second hand, Axminster carpet. We thought though, that a draught could still be felt as the wind whistled through the nest pipes. if you've ever sat in the Wader Scrape hide, with the windows open, you will know the strength of the prevailing wind which whistles over the water there! so a second layer of doors were added, in the winter of 2010, ready for the 2011 breeding season...
 An extra layer of doors inside the bank (behind the nest holes pictured above), successfully cut out the draught which had managed to chill the previous years birds and put them off nesting (we presume).
The breeding season of 2011 proved what a genius addition the doors had been! We were able to proudly claim that 60 babies successfully fledged from our artificial nest bank, in only it's 2nd season! (At this point I was working for the RSPB and travelling around South Yorkshire, so I'm not going to claim a hand in this!!)
So on to today's work by the wardening and reserve team... They have found that it helps to give a bit of a clean out of the artificial holes, so that when the birds return in March, they can spend their time 'titivating' the hole, by lining it with grass and nesting material. Tthe birds don't have to excavate a nest as they would in natural circumstances, so I guess they still need a role to play, which is part of the pair bond too, no doubt.
Kate and the 'vols' who helped clean the holes out today, all came back scratching and wondering whether they'd picked up a small, jumpy, blood-sucking passenger or two in the process!! He he! The wardens now have fleas!!
Here's hoping for another success in the 2012 breeding season, for these delightful little birds. They fly so far, yet are so small... it's brilliant to watch their high speed entry to the nest holes in summer as they go to feed their chicks. On the approach you think there's absoloutely no way that bird is going to get in thetre at that speed, without a head injury at the least!! Yet it does.... Nature is amazing! I think I might have said that already.....
:)
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