Sandmartin Update - July 2025

This year’s wait for our sandmartins to return was rewarded on 24^th March 2025.  This was the day we had our first few sandmartins arrive back.  This would be a bit on the early side, but the weather was favourable with southerly winds too. The first swallow was also seen around then, on the 23^rd March. 

The Sandmartin wall on April 1st, 2025 - video credit, Cheryl Poole

The sandmartins continued to arrive steadily and before long the sandmartin wall was abuzz with activity.  Serious nest maintenance work and pairing up going on. We noticed all the activity suddenly easing off then for a couple of weeks this would have been when they would have had all their eggs laid and all that had to be done was to take it in turns to go out to feed.  Another couple of weeks later the activity ramped up again. With all those little mouths to feed the parent sandmartins were very busy indeed. The next change that we noticed with the sandmartins, was when they started to fledge, and we would see little family groups flying around, as the young were shown how to catch the insects.  By the time we got our bird ringing team in place the young were already fully fledged and we suspected that the adults were already sitting on eggs, preparing to do it all again with their second brood of the year.

Alan with a handful of Sandmartin bags, James, Roisin and Jamie, the bird ringers, with Hannah recording everything. All closely supervised by Vicky the heifer - photo credit Cheryl Poole

On the 4^th July Dr James O’Neill along with two fellow licence bird ringers and another professional ecologist, who acted as scribe, set up a mist net just before dawn.  A mist net is a really fine net which is stretched between two poles.  This is set up about 50 – 100 cm from the sandmartin wall.  The expectation is then that when the sandmartins wake around dawn and leave to hunt for their first meal, they will get caught in the net.  The licenced bird handlers then remove them carefully from the net and place them in a cloth bag, which keeps them very calm.  After about half an hour when the birds seem to have stopped coming out, the net is taken down, so as to allow uninterrupted access for the birds as quickly as possible.  Each bird that has been caught is then taken out of it's bag individually and firstly inspected to see if they have been previously ringed.  A number of statistics are then recorded for each bird including, gender, weight, wing length, breeding state.  This gives an understanding of the age, and health of the bird.  Everything is carefully recorded to go on a central database.  Any bird that has no ring already, will also be given it’s own ring at this stage.  A recapture is exciting to see.  Of the 33 birds that we caught that morning. 9 of them were recaptures. 6 of those had been caught here last summer, 2024, ringed and recorded.  2 of the 9 had originally been caught, ringed and recorded here in summer 2023, then recaptured and recorded here, last summer.  Then again now.  It is incredible to think that these little individuals, only 14g in weight, have been to Sub Saharan Africa and back at least twice. The final recapture from the 4^th July, was one that has originally been tagged in France. James was able to consult the BTO database and discover that this bird had been caught and ringed last August (2024) at the mouth of the Loire in France. It is likely that it was on its way south at that stage. This is a very good example of just one of the many things we can learn from tagging birds.  Every little bit of information that is gathered can help paint a fuller picture of the lifecycle of a species.  When we have more information we can better understand it, and the difficulties it might face. Then with that understanding we can try to address any issues that may be threatening them.

All of the 33 sandmartins that we captured that morning were adults, which would agree with our theory that the first generation of 2025 had fully fledged and the parents were moving on to the second.  The first brood would be roosting outdoors at this stage.  We were also joined be a sparrow hawk who was not exactly impressed that the take away breakfast he was hoping for that morning was being interrupted.

After each bird is processed it is released straight away and it immediately settles back into its routine. 

This is one of the sandmartins who was first caught and ringed here in July 2023, recaptured and recorded here last July and then again on 4th July 2025 - photo credit, Cheryl Poole