House Martin ( Delichon urbicum )

Our House Martins are rearing a second brood this year.  I would have expected them to have fledged by now but as you can see the youngsters are still in the nest.  In the past second broods have not been common, mainly because the nests they built themselves didn't seem to stand the rigours of raising a brood very well.  They had to start again from scratch each year as the weather and House Sparrows destroyed the nest.

This shot could almost be interpreted as one of the adults trying to talk the youngster out of the nest.  It hung there twittering for quite q while unlike the fly in, feed, and away in a second or so.  The youngster clearly expected food not a "telling off".  The house Martin population has fallen, there are now only about 1/4 of the numbers there were in the mid 1960s.  There are a number of reasons for this, two being the loss of nest sites and the fall in insect numbers.