The Sand Martin colony has as exploded with life as 3 pairs return from Africa to their former home to breed. As if the flight from Africa wasn't hard enough, from this point onwards, it's an even bigger race to get everything sorted ready for what hopefully will be a successful breeding season. Sand Martin have always been a personal favourite of mine and I really do look forward to their return each year. They, like their cousin's the House Martins, are a perfect example of how Bird life can work along side human activity without disturbance. Situated on the banks of the Avon Lwyd River, they live along side thousands of people who walk by with their Dogs every day and they will probably witness more football matches this year than most people would in their life time. I will be returning tomorrow for some more pictures but below is a composition of quite a few photos put together in a 'string'. If you look closely in the photos, you can actually see that they are different individual birds as some have an elongated bib and others have wing damage. That wing damage may have been caused by 1 of the many hundreds of predators that these guys face each day. Just in the Uk we have Swarrowhawks, Goshawks, Kestrels, Merlin, Hobby, Peregrine Falcons and even land predators like Weasels, Stoats, Rats and Fox's, all stacked up against them! Not to mention all the predators that they encounter in Africa and on their travels. The odds are astronomical yet, some how, they return to the same spot each year, to the exact same bank or box from which it bred the previous year. The same can be said for many of our migrant Birds yet most of us don't give them to the time of day or respect that they trully deserve. I hope that 2015 brings good weather for them and hopefully we'll have even more of these beauties returning for generations to come.