DID AIR DISPLAY SCARE OFF CLEETHORPES SEAFRONT'S LAST PAIR OF NESTING MARTINS?

                                                                        

Housemartins - nesting failure on Cleethorpes seafront

THE only known pair of  breeding housemartins on Cleethorpes seafront  have quit their nest - apparently after having been 'spooked' by the air display, street carnival and other noisy events held during last month's Armed Forces weekend. 

It was the second breeding failure of this year for the birds on a property on Kingsway - the other occurring when their mud nest was either dislodged or fell to the ground.                                         

Housemartins are part of the same hirundine family as swallows and migrate here from South Africa. They are black and white and similar in size to house sparrows.

The mud nest that has been deserted

However, their numbers in the UK have declined sharply as a result of human disturbance and other pressures.

A few pairs still nest in North East Lincolnshire, with at least one 20-nest colony in Healing, but there was only thought to have been one nest on Cleethorpes seafront - and that has now been vacated in the wake of the air show.       

Red Arrows - popular with people but not with birds

The Grimsby News says:  Back in November, everyone from Prince Charles and Boris Johnson down was issuing warnings about climate change and the bleak future for the planet and wildlife unless we reduced our use of fossil fuels.  We would have to change our ways and make sacrifices, so it was said. North East Lincolnshire Council even drew up its own 'green agenda'. Seven months later and what could be more polluting to the environment than holding an air show - and over a Site of Special Scientific Interest? Yet if anyone had dared to suggest that such a project might not be to the advantage of the planet or to a tiny bird that had flown here from Africa, he or she would most certainly have been scorned as a miserable eco-freak spoilsport. How quickly the pendulum swings!