Peterborough City Council encourages Sand Martins to nest at its Sand Martin House HQ

Peterborough City Council has installed a nesting box at its HQ that it hopes will encourage Sand Martins to make it their base, too. The initiative is the brainchild of council wildlife officers Rowan Rumball and Fran Payne.

Senior wildlife officer Rowan said he was “very proud” to finally see the nesting box finally take its place overlooking the Nene towards the rear of Sand Martin House. ”The wildlife officers at Peterborough City Council always kind of had this in the back of their head,” he said, “that one day we would come down to this green area and we would petition for some section 106 funds to build this, which is a 48 hole nesting box specifically designed for sand martins.” Rowan told the Peterborough Telegraph that sand martin populations were once numerous in this part of the city as, as their name suggests, they thrived on the large sand piles that characterised this industrial area when it was Peterborough East railway station. While efforts were made to continue accommodating the black and white birds following the construction of Sand Martin House, the small birds were ultimately kicked off their preferred patch by larger neighbours like pigeons and magpies. Handily, new nesting box’s entrance holes are far too small for large birds. Rowan is understandably eager to see what the sand martins – who have now flown away to warmer climes for the winter – will make of the box upon their return. “Hopefully when the sand martins come next year after they are done feeding and overwintering in Africa… they will come and discover this box, and they will start using it to nest.” As well as being good for diversity, Rowan suggests that having healthy sand martin populations within the city will benefit the people who live nearby as well: “Sand martins are what we call a higher level trophic predator, which is a very fancy way of saying they eat flies and midges and horrible things like that.” Along with bats, sand martins have a ferocious appetite for such wee beasties. “So the next time that you're walking along the riverfront and not getting absolutely bitten to death by midges, you can probably thank the sand martins.”