Ménage à Trois

We first saw our house martins returned on Saturday (they always arrive and breed late). But I thought they might not stay - a cock sparrow was perched inside the artificial nest below the one they made for themselves, chirping loudly as they flew by, seemingly to deter them from landing. My assumption was that the sparrows had now occupied the artificial nest and that would put the martins off. That certainly seemed to be the case on Saturday.

But no, they are made of stronger stuff. The sparrows are elsewhere in our roofspace, and the martins are settling in. Although curiously, it seems to be a threesome. Maybe siblings help out .

Extra - taken on Saturday. The birds are very difficult to photograph, but this one seems to have a feather in its beak ready to re- line the nest. They capture feathers in the air, and (I have read) focus on white ones.

We put the artificial nests up a few years ago after sparrows took over a nest causing it to collapse. The martins rejected those, but did use the platform above this one as a base for a new mud nest they made themselves. The result is a variety of geometric shapes, albeit aesthetically a mess. They are not the tidiest of households.