Happy Hour for Stanmer house martins

Local photographer Ian Pack recently spent a happy hour at Stamer Park capturing busy house martins visiting nesting boxes to feed their young.

The artificial nesting boxes were installed at Stanmer Farm complex in 2022 as part of repair and maintenance work carried out by the council’s parks and estates teams. They were quickly inhabited by house martins returning on their spring migration from Africa.

Two broods

Last year three boxes were occupied and this year all eight have attracted nesting pairs producing two broods of chicks.

With the boxes clearly in demand, the council will be using income from the Stanmer car parks to install a further four pairs of boxes and expand the park’s house martin colony.