House Martin Delichon urbicum

Fairly common passage migrant and rare breeding bird

Seen from April to October, but mostly in May and June.

The first record is of a pair that was noted to have nested in the 1920s (Pennington et al., 2004). Since then there have been a few breeding attempts, with mixed success – one in 1958, which proved to be unsuccessful (Pennington et al., 2004) and again in 1994, when a pair nested in a cliff cavity at the east end of Logat.

The earliest migrant to Foula on record was seen on the 19^th April, 1996.

Numbers of passage birds are usually higher in the spring, and usually come in clusters of between one and 30, although 50 birds were recorded, on the 2^nd June, 1955.

Autumn sightings have always involved singles.