Purple Martin Update

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an update on our Purple Martin Bird house. Right now I have nothing but good news. We have at least three nesting pair, one pair on the west-facing side and at least 2 pair on the east-facing side. I’m not sure about exact numbers actually living there because I can’t see the east-facing side. Right now that side has three complete or nearly complete nests. I have two nests, one on each side with eggs. On pair laid eggs just last week and the other pair the week prior. Both nests with eggs have green leaves in them which I found a bit odd…apparently others do too. The picture shown is of one of those nests. Our guess is we should have you hatching the next couple of weeks which should be interesting.

This whole experience has been a fun family activity. The kids love the birds and they can’t wait for me to do the next nest check. With nature’s beauty comes it’s downsides and I’ve had to explain to the girls that not all eggs may hatch and even the ones that do may not survive. That prompted a number of other good questions and I think they are getting it. One of the interesting things that Kate and the kids got to witness was hell breaking loose in one of the nests when a house sparrow made an entrance. I can’t say for sure if they knew for sure it was a house sparrow or another purple martin. I’ve seen the purple martins getting into minor tussles with each other when one bird gets too curious about another nest. Kate, however, made it clear it was quite the fight which would suggest it was a house sparrow. For those not in the know, house sparrows are devilish little birds that will sometimes try to evict purple martins by destroy a nest and/or pushing eggs out. Starlings can be just as disruptive as seen by this video:

I personally haven’t done anything active yet with regards to both sparrows and starlings. I’ve yet to see a starling on the bird house (thought I don’t doubt their presence) and while I have seen sparrows they haven’t "pinned" any of the eggs yet. I do have a sparrow trap that I may install with fresh bread here while the eggs are laid. I guess I struggle with doing that if the bread would actually attract them. As with anything new I’ve got a lot to learn!

Back to the good news. As for the birds, I know we have at least one after second year (ASY) male. Deep, brilliant purple color. The other males must be first or second year males because they don’t sport the same brilliant colors and, frankly, it gets really hard to tell them apart from their mates because they have the same body size and same general colors. The ASY male and his mate have 4 of the eight eggs. It’s been fun. I’ve been trying to do nest checks every 4 days trying to work them in around trips out-of-town. Summer plans keep us pretty busy and we’ve got one full week we’ll be out-of-town so it’ll be interesting to see if I can rope one of my neighbors into doing the check for me. More updates to come.