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Spark Bird: Olya Weekley And The House-Martins
How nesting birds inspired a life-long love of nature.
© Thomas Landgren
When wildlife conservationist Olya Weekley was a little kid, she noticed something incredible from her grandmother’s kitchen window: a pair of House Martins had built a mud nest in the eaves of their third floor apartment. That experience sparked Olya’s life-long love of birds. Now she leads the nestbox program at Tucson Bird Alliance, which designs nestboxes for desert birds and helps people create nesting opportunities at home.
BirdNote®
Spark Bird: Olya Weekley And The House-Martins
Written by Ariana Remmel
This is BirdNote.
When wildlife conservationist Olya Weekley was a little kid, she noticed something incredible from her apartment window.
Olya Weekley: I was born and raised in Ukraine and we were living on the third floor. And in the corner of our window in the kitchen every year, House-Martins came and made a mud nest.
[Western House-Martin]
House-Martins are a kind of swallow that breed across much of Europe. They construct an enclosed nest from mud and spit, often under the eaves of homes and city buildings.
Olya Weekley: And my grandma would be furious because they would just make a whole big mess on the glass. And she would grumble about it and be like, "Oh, these darn House-Martins". But at the same time, we both would be glued to them [...] and watching the parents come and feed the babies, [...] seeing the little yellow baby mouths stick out, [...] and then eventually we could see each one of them leave the nest, and then we would wait for them to come back the next year. [laughs]
[Western House-Martins]
Today in Arizona, Olya leads the nestbox program at Tucson Bird Alliance, which designs nestboxes for desert birds and helps people create nesting opportunities at home.
Olya Weekley: It's super special to be able to sit and watch their behaviors in the nestbox, on an open cup nest, even in the window of your third floor apartment. [laughs]
For BirdNote, I’m Mark Bramhill.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Western House-Martin ML239109141 recorded by Hans Norelius and ML587157731 recorded by Paulo Narciso.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2026 BirdNote July 2026
Narrator: Mark Bramhill
ID# sparkbird-28-2026-07-23 sparkbird-28
Reference:
https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/comhom1/cur/introduction
Mark Bramhill
Narrator