sand martin

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See also: sand-martin

English

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sand martin

Noun

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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,[1]
      SAND-MARTIN, Shore-bird.
    • 1774, Gilbert White, Letter 20 in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, London: B. White & Son, 1789, p. 175,[2]
      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, chapter 4, in Homage to Catalonia‎[3], Boston: The Beacon Press, published 1955, page 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[4], London: Faber and Faber, published 1990, page 42:
      The sandmartins’ nests were loopholes of darkness in the riverbank.

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