Nest monitoring
Find a nest or colony of barn swallows or house martins. If a colony is found, try to monitor all active nests with minimal nuisance.
You can choose any location you want for your study.
The ideal monitoring area is the one located at or near your home or place of work. You can also watch nests more remotely if you are able to visit them regularly.
There should be one or more nests of house martins or barn swallows or both species, which you can safely observe from the ground level or from a window, without disrupting the birds. Most nests are found in buildings, but can also find in another artificial structure, such as a bridge or a natural nest on a rock.
To obtain important information about the nests about the number and timing of breeding attempts and their success, it is important to be able to monitor the nests throughout the breeding season, starting around mid-April and ideally visit at least once a week – missing a week for a holiday is not a problem. To ensure that you don’t miss any birds from the second brood, you should continue to visit until at least mid-September or until the birds finally leave.
Remember that some pairs lay eggs twice during the breeding season. As the main objective is to determine whether the nests are being used for 1 or 2 broods, it is important not to assume that the site has been abandoned if you do not observe any activity during August. Activity may be difficult to detect if birds are incubating a second flock.
When the swallows migrate, check the nest one last time to see if any unhatched eggs remain.
If you find a colony of swallows, try to monitor all active nests throughout the breeding season.
Nest checks will be carried out every 5-7 days throughout the breeding season. Do not visit more frequently, as this could have a negative impact on nesting success. The recommended frequency of nest visits is less frequent than for other species, because there is some evidence that more frequent visits may negatively impact their nesting success.
You can submit your data even if you only visit a nest or colony once during the breeding season.
You can also, if you wish, set up a team of observers to ensure that regular visits can be made to your survey area.
The maximum observation period per visit for each nest or group of nests shall not exceed 15 minutes. However, during peak periods, a visit of approximately one minute may be sufficient to immediately record that young are still present in all nests.
If you are entering your results online, locate the area of your observations on the map using the map navigation tools. You can zoom in on the map to locate your area and define the location boundary by drawing a polygon.
It is desirable to carry out an initial exploratory visit by mid-April, i.e. before the start of any nesting activity. During this visit you should complete information about the site and about any existing nests.
Start by recording the location of all existing nests at your study site. For sites with one or two nests it is vital that you are able to confidently identify each individual nest throughout the breeding season. A photograph can prove extremely useful when new nests are constructed or existing nests are destroyed.
If a building has too many nests or has nests on more than one side of it, it may not be practical to place them on the map. In this case, we suggest dividing the nests into groups, with each group consisting of up to 10 nests that can be observed at the same time. For example, you could choose to group the nests that are on the same side of the building.
In the logging form, indicate that this is a group of nests on the same side of the building.
Take a photo to number each group and their nests (e.g. Group 1, Nest 1.1) to help you record your observations on each visit.
Please note any new nests that were not present during the preliminary visit, but are built between the nests selected during the breeding season.
Each new nest should be numbered and the information recorded as soon as the birds start to build it. You should also take a new photograph which you will also upload.
A nest that has replaced another nest (built in exactly the same place as a nest that has been knocked down or destroyed) does not need to be recorded as a new nest. Use the same number as the nest that was replaced.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
https://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/house_martins_2017_instructions_v6.pdf