Late Brood of House martins

[Teal]

Our resident house martins have hatched a second brood of at least four in the last couple of days. Anyone else experienced similar?

We have had late broods in other years and had a swallow here on 17th December 2001 but I don't immagine it survived

[thunder]

Originally Posted by Teal

Our resident house martins have hatched a second brood of at least four in the last couple of days. Anyone else experienced similar?

We have had late broods in other years and had a swallow here on 17th December 2001 but I don't immagine it survived

A friend in Cambridgeshire has House Martins feeding young that hatched about two weeks ago, and thinks he has another pair still sitting on eggs.

henrya

[Amoeba]

I don't know about a new brood but over here we have a house martin family still busily feeding chicks. No tiny heads poking out yet, but I'm pretty sure the young from earlier this year are involved in helping, and their parents were late nesting. So is it possible they're a bit off schedule because they were late arriving?

[lincs lass]

Not got housemartins, but still have baby blackbirds and thrushes.

[Nightranger]

Originally Posted by Teal

Our resident house martins have hatched a second brood of at least four in the last couple of days. Anyone else experienced similar?

We have had late broods in other years and had a swallow here on 17th December 2001 but I don't immagine it survived

A few years ago this would not have been unusual but the succession of cold and wet summers has played havoc with breeding in the last few years. Worse still, the migration has been erratic and we only saw our house martins in Lancashire after the swifts had arrived. The pair on my house fledged a brood some weeks ago and I hoped for a second brood but I am not sure they have tried. The family came back to the nest at the weekend and I thought the female may have been incubating. Sadly, I think the family have not tried for another brood (at least not in this nest) and may have been checking out the nest for next year.

[teknomage]

We have a family of house martins that have raised & fledged two broods in the nest in our eaves and are curently feeding a third brood in the same nest. The youngsters are very vocal at the moment and I'm waiting for them to fledge (not very nice weather for them at the moment).

Several of the pairs of swallows that nest in the outbuildings have successfully raised two broods of youngsters this year.

tekno.mage

[Amoeba]

Just to update from earlier, I can confirm that here in Edinburgh there are still some house martins feeding chicks though I'm not sure how old. There's a definite chill in the air too, you can see your own breath clearly.

[thunder]

The friend mentioned in post 2 says he thinks the House Martins still have about two weeks feeding to do for their batch of chicks. Interestingly, he says he believes this is this pair's first brood this year, not a second or third brood.

henrya