House martins are summer visitors to Arran. They undertake incredible journeys from south of the Sahara to reach our shores to breed. Their nests can take up to 10 days to build and use over 1,000 beak sized pellets of mud. Many of us marvel at this effort and respect these delightful birds and their nests which are so much a feature of summer on Arran - but for how much longer?
A house martin scavenges for nest building material.
Photo by Brian Cooper
The house martin population across the UK is changing. From long term monitoring data held by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), while there was a 69 per cent decrease in house martin abundance across England between 1967 and 2012, there was a 125 per cent increase in Scotland between 1994 and 2013.