The king of the swallows is invading the Cape. Purple Martins, huge and muscular brutes among the swallows, have been making inroads into some new territory this spring. As of last week, two Mass Audubon sanctuaries – Long Pasture in Barnstable and Wellfleet Bay in Wellfleet – now have nesting Purple Martins for the first time in memory.
Martins are scarce and local breeders in Massachusetts - I can only think of seven colonies in the whole state, two of which are in Mashpee. So to add two more in one short week is astonishing. To understand how it happened, you need to know a bit about martin life history.
Purple Martins, like Chimney Swifts and to some extent Ospreys, nest only in manmade structures in the Eastern US. Folks have been putting up martin houses for a long time. Apparently Native Americans hung empty gourds for martins to nest in, and back in 1831 John James Audubon noted that most country taverns had a martin house on the upper part of their sign-board, saying “the handsomer the box, the better does the inn generally prove to be”.
The martin houses at Long Pasture were donated by the martin queen of Mashpee, Mary Keleher. Under the nurturing care of Mary and her daughter Ashley, the two Mashpee colonies have thrived, and are overflowing with martins this year. Since they only eat flying insects and have big appetites, martin colonies can fail completely during cold, wet spells in spring. But Mary and Ashley have an answer for cold spells, which of course involves supplementing the colony by using plastic spoons to fling crickets at the martins, who catch them mid-air. These gals really love their martins.
Wellfleet Bay’s gourd-style martin complex was donated by generous bird benefactor Mike O’Connor of Birdwatcher’s General Store in Orleans. Thanks to overflow birds from Mary’s colonies in Mashpee, both of the new houses now have nesting martins. Due to individually coded red leg bands, several of the birds are known to have come from the Mashpee colonies, and one of the Wellfleet birds was hatched from a colony in Stonington Connecticut last summer. Young martins will range widely in search of new nesting sites.
Purple Martins are only here between May and early September, when they head to wintering grounds deep in the Amazon basin in Brazil. Their full wintering range is still unknown, but researchers in Pennsylvania have been putting tracking devices known as geolocaters on martins to learn more about their migration routes and wintering range. They’ve learned that the martins can travel up to 310 miles per day during migration, and that they make the 600 mile Gulf of Mexico crossing in one nonstop flight.
Before you rush out to buy a martin house, you should know that martins like to nest in big open areas adjacent to water, so your average backyard is not likely to support a colony. And even if you do have the right kind of landscape, just like with bluebird boxes you need to commit to dealing with the invasive House Sparrows that will likely try to take over the houses. But if you do meet these criteria and you end up with some martins, please tell me about it. And don’t worry - when a cold spell hits, I know a couple of expert cricket-flingers who can teach you their ways.
