Photo © Copyright 2004 Jim Jung and licensors. All rights reserved.

Purple Martins

If you're a dutiful and disciplined Martin fancier, every winter you check your house for necessary repairs and repainting. Then you plug the entry holes plugged to keep out Sparrows, Starlings and other interlopers and remove the plugs in early March so the Martin scouts (and the closely following Martin flock) can inspect the results of your hard work and find it good.

For those siting their Martin house for the first time, research the matter thoroughly. The most important things to remember are:

• make sure it's within fifty feet of your house because these birds like the company of humans
• martins need "swooping room," so don't put it too near trees
• you must be able to raise and lower the house and clean it

The relationship between humans and the Purple Martin clan on this continent is an ancient one that stretches back thousands of years. For more on that, see:

From our Archive, In Their Gourds

The beginning of August marks the staging time for the Purple Martins - Progne subis - when the disparate colonies of these birds begin to flock together and mass in favored locales - swamps, forest edges and favored fields - anywhere they find an abundance of flying insects. It's in these places that these graceful and sociable birds feed and fatten and renew old acquaintances before beginning the long and difficult flight to South America where they spend the winter.

However their time in these locales is brief - usually no more than a day or two - before the insect feast is consumed forcing them to move further south toward the Gulf and the long flight over open water to South America. So should you encounter one of these migrating flocks make the most of it and enjoy their aerobatics since they'll be gone very soon. Most of the Martins in our area will have departed (on average) by the 2nd of September, although a few stragglers can still be seen as late as the end of October.

From our Archive: In Their Gourds

Offsite links:

• Purple Martin Conservation Association, featuring useful downloads of information and a Scout Arrival map.
• Danny's Purple Martin Place
• Purple Martin House Plans Mark Twain NWR complex. General Upkeep Instructins apply to all projects.
• Cornel Lab of Ornithology Purple Martin page

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