So now I'm thinking of a Purple martin apartment and would like some advice from readers who have tried one and how successful it was attracting birds. We live next to a small pond on a golf course and it really seems strange we haven't been able to attract many small birds (there are a lot of pond birds). Join us Sunday October 21 st at 7PM on 88.7FM, or listen live, to learn more about Purple Martins and how these birds are intimately tied to the natural ecosystems around us as well as the urbanized spaces we occupy together.We have tried hummingbird feeders and currently a small seed birdfeeder with very little if any luck attracting much.
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In her free time you can find Lorelle running away from the office and searching for mushrooms, wild edibles, or other elusive birds. Joan Hagar while continuing her outreach activities volunteering for birding festivals such as the Oregon Shorebird Festival and the Birding & Blue Festivals. She originally moved to Oregon to work at the Bandon National Wildlife Preserve, but is now a Masters Student with Dr. After a landing a dream job at a non-profit focusing on environmental education and green infrastructure in Pennsylvania she decided it was a good time to return to school to pursue a graduate degree. At the age of eight her parents got her binoculars to cultivate her love of birds that she carried through her undergraduate research experiences in Vermont studying Double-crested Cormorants and Great Horned Owls. Lorelle has grown up infatuated by birds her whole life, often running away from home just to sit underneath a tree to observe her flying friends overhead.
She is slowly uncovering the hidden elements of these critical birds by studying the food sources in two different habitats, an upland forest and along waterways with artificial bird boxes, and the birds’ willingness to seek out ideal habitat. Lorelle will help us untangle the effects of declining insect populations, possibly driven by a warming climate, and overlay those links with how humans on the west coast are putting up more artificial bird boxes making it easier to for birds to disregard forests as potential habitat all together. Lorelle is banding a Purple Martin near a wetland to be able to track it’s movements in the future If scientists are to better understand avian populations, the habitat qualities and the relative availability of food necessary for their survival must be assessed simultaneously. It’s no surprise that aerial insectivores being the most rapidly declining group of birds in North America. Purple Martins have historically depended on wildfires to clear open areas for better hunting grounds, but with the onset of fire-suppression efforts across the west these birds are more reliant on clearcuts typical of industrial forestlands. Couple these regional patterns with the recent global finding that flying insect populations (Martins’ food source is exclusively from eating insects while in-flight) in the tropics are expected to decline as much as 20%, and from 1989-2016 German nature preserves have documented a 75% decline flying insects biomass. Here is a classic yummy meal for the bird.Īlthough humans are supplementing places for these birds to nest, high quality habitat in forested areas are shrinking because our natural ecosystems are in peril. Purple Martins are aerial insectivores meaning they only eat insects while they are in flight. Conversely, along the west coast of the US they generally utilize cavities in snags (standing dead trees) as their nesting site, but adding backyard bird boxes for the Purple Martin are becoming more common. Therein lies the problem – these birds are common on the east coast because they completely depend on habitat provided to them by humans some researchers worry they have lost the generational knowledge of going to the forest to find suitable homes. So much so that on the east coast of the US they live almost exclusively in bird boxes. The Purple Martins often nest in groups to help protect each other from predators, their colonial personalities help generate southing chitchat between birds, and they’re very happy to live in artificial nest boxes. These are birds with an eye-popping iridescent blue-purple body, sleek black wings with a forked tail that aid in its magnificent maneuverability allowing them to fly at speeds of 45 mph or faster.
Photos curtsey of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Male Purple Martins who are the largest birds in the Swallow group.
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