sand martin

sand martin (plural sand martins)

1. A migratory passerine bird of the swallow family, Riparia riparia.
   • 1668, John Wilkins, An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language, London: Sa. Gellibrand and John Martyn, Part 2, Chapter 5, p. 151,

     SAND-MARTIN, Shore-bird.

   • 1774, Gilbert White, Letter 20 in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, London: B. White & Son, 1789, p. 175,

     The only instance I ever remember where this species haunts any building is at the town of Bishop’s Waltham, in this county, where many sand-martins nestle and breed in the scaffold-holes of the back-wall of William of Wykeham’s stables:

   • 1938, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955, Chapter 4, p. 38,

     The position was perched on a sort of razor-back of limestone with dug-outs driven horizontally into the cliff like sand-martins’ nests.

   • 1975, Seamus Heaney, “Nesting-Ground” in New Selected Poems, 1966-1987, London: Faber and Faber, 1990, p. 42,

     The sandmartins’ nests were loopholes of darkness in the riverbank.

• (Riparia riparia): bank swallow, collared sand martin, European sand martin

• brown-throated martin (Riparia paludicola)
• pale sand martin (Riparia diluta)

• sand martin on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Riparia riparia on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Riparia riparia on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons