Stuart Rae

Original House Martin nests

A house martin looks out from deep inside its cliff nest; the original site for these birds to build their nests before we built houses with eaves for them - artificial rock overhangs.

This colony built their nests in the cave left of the sea stack, at the back of a sheltered bay on the north sea, near Aberdeen.

A closer view shows that it is more of a large overhang of rock rather than a deep cave.

Their are five completed nests in this photograph, and a few that have either fallen off or are only just begun to be built. There were twelve complete nests altogether. Each nest is well placed in a corner or rock within the whole larger overhang. A perfect safe site for a colony.

A house martin looks out from its nest, the entrance hole is open onto the rock roof, like they are on buildings.

Then the bird dropped out of the nest and whizzed by, too quickly to photograph without flash - which I prefer not to use on wildlife.