The last nest of 2 martin fledglings (which were a complete surprise) fledged the same day that Bonnie was supposed to dump rain all along the coast. Fortunately for some, the rain was more of a short drizzle but amazingly the purple martins seemed to know something was up.

Every morning our colony would get a faithful dozen or so visitors that would sit on the housing and chatter away. By about 11 AM they would leave only to return again the next morning. But the day after Bonnie not a purple feather was to be seen. Many speculate that birds, being so sensitive to changes in barometric pressures and the weather , could avoid bad weather by delaying migration to an area of poor weather or vice versa. Could it be coincidence?

According to Melvin L. Kreithen and William T. Keeton of the Division of Biological Sciences, Langmuir Laboratory, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,(23 October 1973) Homing pigeons were able to to detect air pressure changes. As purple martin landlords can tell you, a purple martins homing ability is at the very least equal to that of a homing pigeon. So the correlation is fair.

By any account, the season is over here in South Florida and all martins have left.

The factors that affect a birds migration are complex and not completely understood. Click this article for Neotropical Migratory Bird Basics from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. If you want to learn more about Neotropical Migratory Birds read this article on Birds Built-in Barometer.

Not that my birds needed a Tropical Storm to end their party, migratory birds know when it is time to go based on known factors such as the length of day and for some types of birds, even star patterns. There is nothing to be done for purple martins (or any other migratory bird-for that matter) that linger on. Some folks will tell you to lower or remove housing, but don’t bother. Just like the old wives tales that persist that tell hummingbird aficionados to remove hummingbird feeders to push hummers to migrate, nothing needs to be done.

So keep the feeders full, leave the housing up till you feel like it. Birds have been migrating for a long time and the only thing we need to do for them is support them, by way of a beak full of nectar, a belly full of seed or perhaps a dry place to sleep at night.

Roosts can form under bridges, in trees or reed beds. You can find them in big cities or small towns, in bustling areas or in the middle of nowhere. They are sometimes well lit to keep predators at bay but can also be in the most secluded of areas.

The Purple Martin Conservation Association’s Project MartinRoost is dedicated to documenting roost locations and preserving them. You can look up roosts that have been reported in your area by visiting their Project MartinRoost Page.

I found this interesting picture , posted with permission of the photographer (Joe Levins of Wetumpka, Alabama) of a colony site is being used for a small martin roost. It started around the first of June and has increased in number each day since. According to the landlord, Joe, last year they also roosted there, but did not start until after the first of July.

Southern Patriot

If you live in South Carolina and with an extra $27 dollars to spare, you can take a 2 1/2 hour cruise on The Southern Patriot” (that’s a 65 foot cruise boat) which will take you out to historic Bomb Island, where hundreds of thousands of Purple Martins roost on the largest Purple Martin sanctuary in North America. During the cruise you will hear narration about the Purple Martins and about the historic significance of how this island was used for bombing practice by Jimmy Doolittle prior to his raid on Tokyo during WWII. Don’t worry if you get thirsty as light refreshments are  served. Interested? Call the Lake Murray Marina in Ballentine, SC at: 803-749-8594

If you want to learn more about purple martin roosts you can also visit:

Coastal Carolina Purple Martin Society (Manns Harbor Purple Martin Roost)

Tulsa Audubon Society

The article mentions specifically that the martins were, “stalled in April due to low pressure systems in the south. That delay seems to have upset normal migration patterns in which birds like purple martins send scout males first, followed later by females.”

I thought that I just had to clarify this statement that seems to speak to the age old (and false) myth that purple martins will send out “scouts” ahead of the rest of the colony. Purple martins experience a staggered molt in South America and  older birds will complete molting before younger birds do. The phenomenon known as “scouts” is actually just older more experienced birds rushing “home” to secure nesting prime nesting spots. Now that we have that straightened out…

As far as why YOUR purple martins never arrived; there is only really one reason.

The colony experienced losses of adult birds, nestlings and fledglings due to predation, weather extremes (cold or drought) greater than the rate of reproduction.

Here is how that can happen:

1. Prolonged Cold Spring Snaps

2.Extended Dry Weather / Drought

3. Predation

Let me go into detail on these:

In cold weather (temps of 40 degrees F or below) aerial insects are not available and starvation will occur within days. Record Low temps for record breaking extended periods of time, made foraging for food impossible for many purple martins. So birds that may have arrived early, didn’t survive this year. Purple Martin landlords often report of “early arrivers” braving intense spring cold snaps for days and even with poor weather forecast, martins will often times continue their journey Northward and remain at their colony site. Many landlords last year and this year reported huge losses of ASY (adult) purple martins from cold snaps such as these.

Droughts were widespread and severe in many areas in 2008 even more so in 2009. Reduced rain results in reduced amounts of aerial insects thus reducing available food supply. Large losses were reported last year of thousands of dead nestlings that starved to death. According to Louise Chambers of the Purple Martin Conservation Association, “.We don’t know if adults will return after total nesting failure” so even though “many landlords are reporting a very good season this year” it could be that those adults returned or their sites attracted new adults.

The most important factor and the one WE CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT, is predation. Most predation goes undiscovered. Without safety precautions, such as predator guards in place, raccoons and snakes can easily climb ANY martin pole and go from martin nest to martin house for an easy meal. A colony can be decimated within days. Once a gang of raccoons finds the tasty treats (your birds) at the top of your purple martin pole, it will climb every pole in the neighborhood. And believe me, I have seen it Raccoons DO eat birds! Last year at our local roost, I witnessed raccoons dining at their leisure on so many purple martins that their body parts littered the ground like confetti. You can read the post here: Davie Fla Roost.

One of the reasons why the Purple Martin Conservation Association recommends nest checks is to discover problems early. By discovering problems such as nest predation, you can monitor the health and growth of your colony. Many landlords that report complete colony abandonment have in fact been suffering chronic losses and/or predation. The ultimate failure of many colonies could have been avoided by careful observation and having predator protection installed.

So to conclude, if you don’t observe your martins and perform nest checks, your colony may have suffered losses of adults from cold weather, losses of nestlings due to dry weather and, if unprotected, losses from ground predators as well. Then that is why you had no martins return at all.

If you are interested in reading more about raccoons and the threat they pose, try this article titled, “Raccoons in our Midst”.

If you want to know what other threats there are to your colony check out this surprisingly long list, “Threats.”

©2010 PurpleMartinArt.com / S.Halpin

The Red Shouldered hawks nest close by and protect this as their territory from other hawks. If that can be counted as protection…I am not too sure.

Night time is quiet and I am not sure if many martins are returning to the nests to roost at night. They may have moved on to a local assembly area or pre-migratory roost. The fact that I am talking about the roosts already almost sounds crazy! Can time have flown by so fast? I guess I will start planning another trip to the roost in Davie this year.  It has almost been exactly a year since I went to see it and video taped it. You can see it at my blog post titled Purple Martin Pre-Migratory Roost Spectacular. It is a great YouTube clip taken at the roost with swarms of purple martins.

The webcam will not be up again for the remainder of this year as the computer I had it running on is dead. I plan on replacing it as soon as I can and it will be up again next January. I promise.

©2010 PurpleMartinArt.com / S.Halpin

In Apple Creek Ohio at the Yoder colony, the season started normal enough. Their 50 pairs of martins were devastated however, by a 4th of July cold spell that killed 50 purple martin nestlings. An ASY female showed up at their site in mid August. The Yoders did not believe the female was from their site due to the fact that she had a recently fledged youngster that she was still caring for and no recently fledged young from their site. They witnessed the female bringing in nesting material into a compartment in the middle of September.

On November 1st, 2009 was the last sighting of the females offspring. Whether he followed the instinct to fly South, succumbed to the weather or was killed by a hawk, we do not know. Only that after that date the ASY female was alone.

The Yoder’s conditioned her to accept supplemental feedings by tossing meal worms into the air. They fed her approximately 50 meal  worms each day. Feeding her 5 times a day- about 10 meal worms at a feeding.

She survived 7 inches of snow on Jan 3, 2010 and 0°F  (ZERO DEGREES !) temperatures. And like this she was accepting feedings and was chirping up until January 10, 2010. At the last sighting on that date she was seen sitting on the front porch of the compartment she was using. The compartments were checked and no remains were found. Did she finally migrate? Did she fall victim to a hawk attack? We will never know.

The final news on this amazing story are both sad and not. That she survived that long is an amazing testament to the lengths that purple martin landlords will go to to protect “their” birds. A curiosity that makes one wonder how new behavioral patterns are evolved in a bird that has shown one huge evolutionary transitional shift already. But on the other hand, if in fact she did perish, how would the perpetuation of this behavior ultimately serve purple martins as a whole?

Check out PurpleMartins-R-Us.com for more information on Purple Martins including supplemental feeding of Adult Purple Martins. There you will even find a video of martins being fed.

As of right now there is capacity for 33 pairs but a few more gourds will go up bumping up this years capacity to about 36 pairs of purple martins. Last year 131 purple martins fledged from this site and we hope to do as well this year.

As of this morning there appears to be 2 pairs of martins. More should be showing up soon. Since migration appeared to have been delayed due to weather, the time between the ASY or adult purple martins arrival and the SY or sub adults arrival may be shorter than usual. So be prepared and get your houses up. If you live in the northern portion of the purple martins range and don’t expect them till later in the year, feel free to watch them on the web cam which should be running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week…barring any technical issues which sometimes arise.

A few European Starlings keep making early morning visits but will not enter my nest trap. The first day they arrived the starlings tried to enter the trap which was stuck and since then they seem in no hurry to enter it again. Of course, it is working now but as my luck would have it, they wont even look at it again. Instead the starlings will sit and watch from atop the gourd rack and do that drawn out backwards wolf whistle that makes my hair stand up. Like fingernails on a chalk board. Normally the repeating nestbox trap also known as a S&S trap would do the trick and trap them like a charm but alas, you can lead a horse to water…  For easy to build step by step plans on how to make your own S&S trap click on the photo above or this link:  Repeating Sparrow and Starling nestbox trap plans. But in essence the trap has a clever teeter totter type mechanism that automatically resets itself after depositing the trapped bird (UNHARMED) in a cage below. A great tool for those that manage bluebird trails as well. Our native birds need all the help they can get!

It is quite apparent that they were all returning because of the nestlings in the one nest, almost as if to keep them company. Though the parents of the other successful nests did not contribute with feeding the nestlings, they did return as if tied to the colony site while it was still active. Once the nests were empty, they were obviously released from whatever ties they had to the location and have most definitely moved on. Yesterday I counted 6 martins on the wires for less than 5 minutes. They did not land on the housing at all which leads me to believe that they were not my birds, only passers-by. Today there were none. And so the days have passed since the nestlings were taken to the rehabilitation facility.

Unfortunately this does not bode well for the nestlings/fledglings, as far as their survivability post rehabilitation. Without parents to instruct them on feeding, their chances are poor. But there may be a new hope for some rehabbed nestling martins that miss the opportunity for the post fledging instruction period that they usually receive from their parents. In a post on the PMCA forum, a purple martin conservationist in California has had positive, albeit early results from a radically new and controversial theory in the rehabilitation of nestling purple martins. Check out the thread HERE.

In short, it describes how in past years in banding and releasing into colonies, nestlings that required rehabilitation, that none had been recovered. But last year, 3 nestlings that were rehabbed were “taught” to catch flying insects in a large flight cage. These 3 purple martins were them banded and released. This year one of the 3 birds was sighted in the area having obviously survived and returned from migration. This just may be a huge turn in the current thinking in rehabilitating purple martins. If this hypothesis is correct purple martins may very well have new hope when it comes to purple martins that miss that critical post fledging instructions. Rehabilitation that may have been in years past-delaying of the inevitable, may very well be  a new beginning for these birds.

Many thanks to Daniel Airola, from Sacremento, California for this important information.

My martins have been gone for over a month. Reading the posts from the Purple Martin Forums, as far north as Canada, the final martins are heading towards their premigratory roosts. Within a week or two, they will all be gone.

Down south I have noticed some other departures and some new arrivals. The Swallow tailed Kites have all left. They leave shortly after the martins do, also forming premigratory roosts. Though their numbers are far less, their size and beauty makes them no less inspiring and amazing to see. I have begun to notice large flocks of barn swallows feeding silently as they zip back and forth, fairly low to the ground. Their rust colored necks and bellies in varying shades of cream and rust are a dead give away. Around the house, 15 Miles away by the Super Target, and many points in between I see them in groups of 10 to 50 birds. I would guess there must be thousands of these birds spread out all over south Florida in such a fashion. I will have to wait for the first cold snap up north to bring the large flocks of Robins that come every year. I am fortunate to live near a large wetland preserve and there are always large numbers of birds that fly to and from the preserve. Robins always coming and going to the preserve, En Mass. Some other winter time visitors to my yard make illusive appearances such as the pair of Eastern Phoebes that come every winter.

I will shortly begin planning next season in earnest. Another pole, Predator protection, a bat house and more gourds of course. I strive to give my neighbors something to laugh at. If they only knew the joy these birds can bring.

Blog Contents Copyrighted 2008: S.Halpin / www.PurpleMartins-R-Us.com