How to attract House Martins (1 Viewer)

I have two single House Martin nest cups, one at the front of the house and one at the back.

There are plenty of House Martins around on my estate and regularly nest on the houses, except mine!

How can I encourage them or attract them to either use the nestboxes or nest on the house?


Thanks.

Dunno! I have 7 House Martin built nests on the side of my house and my next door neighbour has 0. All of mine are south facing, and have been added to each year. About 5 years ago we had the gutters cleaned and the idiots doing it removed the two nests that were there at the time, the Martins just rebuilt. Across the road there are 2 nests out of 6 house houses. The houses we back onto (north facing) there used to be about 12 nests 4 years ago, but they all seem to have been abandoned. Each year a pair starts to build a nest on the north side of our house but always abandon it about a quarter of the way through building.

This year we've had a single story extension built on the south of the house so there is now a new roof that comes to just below the first floor bedroom window where all the nests are. Time will tell if this deters them from using the nests this year, I hope not.

Thanks walwyn, that helps a lot. I've been reading up and it seems that House Martins choose nesting sites "at random".

That's probably true. We get HMs camping in the old nests about this time each year. I'm starting to see HMs over the village this last week. Then some years they move off after a week. Two years ago it was the 3rd week of June before a pair started a brood, quickly followed by another pair, and then another. Last year they started about the second week of May, and by the end of the Year two more nests had been built. The last normally leave around October, but last year they were a couple of weeks earlier.

8 years ago, the estate in which I live produced 361 H/M's. Last year it produced 2. Housing built further West on open fields removed the nesting material, (muddy ponds) which were available to them. I have tried to put up large platforms with soil and water and clay and water, but the only thing I get is grass growing 15 feet up.


Regards

Malky

Thanks walwyn and Malky. Strange about mine, I wish they would nest on my house!