House Martins Nesting

[Neil Rigby]

We have House Martins nesting next door and there are about half a dozen of them flying around.

We've had them nest at our house once, they chose the apex of the gable to build their nest. We were having an extension built at the time which made it a bit disturbed for them, but they didn't seem to mind.

We have modern soffits which I'm sure deters them somewhat.

Should I be trying to enlarge this colony by providing nest boxes or go for Swifts instead or both?

[Twitcheruth]

We have had House Martins here regulary for the past 5 years Neil and we have modern plastic soffits etc which they don't seem to mind.We've never had more than 1 nest built on the house though.
My husband is planning on building a few Swift boxes over the winter which we'll site around the corner away from the Martins.
Apparently Swift boxes should have a postbox shaped entrance hole leading onto a ledge,he has found a design that incorporates a Bat box at the back of it as we have Pipistrelles here too.

Some info here;

http://www.londons-swifts.org.uk/Nes...Attraction.htm