Sandy home for martins

My study window looks out over a 10-acre meadow with a small hill on the far side. Under the grass on the hill there’s esker sand and gravel laid down in the last Ice Age. Back in the days when the main forms of transport round here were powered by horses and donkeys people had to be more locally self-sufficient, particularly for heavy items like sand and gravel, and a small quarry was opened up on the west side of the hill.

The quarry was abandoned a long time ago and sand and gravel now comes in lorries from far afield. At least, it was abandoned by human beings but a colony of sand martins took over. They bored their nesting tunnels, some of which can be over a metre long, into the vertical face of the pit, choosing the strata with bands of easy-to-excavate sand rather than the coarser gravel. And, during the day, they fly out over the 10-acre meadow catching insects on the wing.

The sand martin has two Irish relatives, the house martin and the swallow (swifts are not related) and it is the smallest of the three. It also has a shallower fork to its tail and is a bit stubbier in appearance. This gives it a different flight pattern, more abrupt than a swallow with less of the flowing loops and arabesques.