We have designed and built this face to provide further nesting space which we can clean out each year and guarantee secure nesting for Sand martins year after year. A 3 feet wide strip behind the timber is packed with sharp sand. The birds enter the face through the pre-cut holes and tunnel into the packed sand. Each of the 180 holes are 57mm in diameter. The birds will easily find the holes and will tunnel as far as 2 and a half feet into the sand before digging a burrow in which to lay their eggs.

It is likely that their burrows are separated by as little as a few millimeters of sand. Like other members of the swallow family, both parents will collect mud with which to line their tunnels and burrows to prevent subsidence.

If you or I were to dig the equivalent volume of sand, it would amount to 3 tons excavated only by our finger nails!

During the 2007 nesting season, 150 pairs of birds nested in this facility.