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.

   3 more examples

   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:

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

   1938, George Orwell, chapter 4, in Homage to Catalonia, Boston: The Beacon Press, published 1955, page 38

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

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

   Synonyms: bank swallow, collared sand martin, European sand martin