Hampshire is offering hundreds more nest cups for house martins

The Hampshire House Martins Project is preparing to fit as many as 900 artificial nest cups, after a pilot did better than the organizers expected. The BBC reported on November 10, 2026, that 249 woodcrete cups went up near known nests in northern and eastern Hampshire, and house martins used 27 of them this summer. Coordinator Nigel Matthews asked residents, schools, and businesses to apply for free cups so the birds have a place to raise young without gathering a full mud nest.

House martins are on the UK Red List. The population fell by 40 percent between 1995 and 2024. The birds return from Africa in April and May and can carry about 1,000 pellets of soft mud to finish one cup under a roof. The project ties the decline to fewer insects and to hot, dry weather, including the summer of 2026, which left less wet mud, and to uPVC eaves that mud will not stick to. A public survey last year recorded more than 500 nest sites in the county. Keith Betton, chair of the Hampshire Ornithological Society, said the next phase offers cups to properties within 1 kilometre of a recorded nest, with eaves four to seven metres above the ground. The news is those 27 used cups and the plan for more. It is not a county-wide recovery.