Housemartins practising nest building?

[teknomage]

Our third brood of housemartins in the nest under the eaves has fledged - but I've been watching some strange behaviour from the youngsters. There is always a lot of flying around, coming back to the nest, clinging to the wall beside the nest etc in the week or so after a brood fledges, but some of these new youngsters are paying a lot of attention to an old broken nest site further along the eaves - to the point of bringing mud and making what looks like attempts to "patch up" this old nest. As it will soon be time for the housemartins to leave us, I wondered if the young housemartins are "practising" their nest building skills and if the adults encourage them to do this? It's not a behaviour I've seen before.

I think the majority of our swallows have now left - although I didn't see them gathering this year :-( A few of the later youngsters are still around and roosting in one of the barns at night.

tekno.mage

[LynM]

I've been watching similar behaviour over the last couple of days, but not the nest repairing bit. I took these photos this morning when there were at least 15 flying around, darting up to the nest and away again. How they don't bump into each other I don't know!

My angle for the photos is not easy, but I think that you will get the idea!