This article was written by “Daanya The Detective”, a member of the VFAS Youth Birding Club, after attending a banding of purple martins at Brightside Farm Park where a new purple martin nesting structure was installed just last year by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Charlestown Township to great success. All birds were handled and banded for research purposes under state and federal permits by trained personnel.
My family and I drove to Brightside Farm Park on July 1st to witness the banding of purple martins, which is a type of large swallow. Purple martins traditionally nest in old cavities in dead trees. The problem is that many people are cutting down dead trees thinking nothing will be living there. This is why now purple martins are most commonly found in man-made birdhouses.
After we reached Brightside Farm Park I saw this white thing in a peculiar shape – a purple martin condominium made of gourds. Purple martin nests are different from other bird nests since purple martin houses are trying to replicate nest cavities, which woodpeckers make. Purple martins live on grasslands where there are plenty of flying insects they can catch. All the adult purple martins were flying around searching for insects to eat. Even though purple martins are small birds they have to eat a lot since catching bugs is not easy so they constantly need to eat.
There were 24 individual purple martin nest boxes which are also known as gourds. The workers lowered the structure so they could get into the gourds. First we saw a baby purple martin which was 2 days old and it was so tiny it was not allowed to be banded. They also found an egg that will never hatch. In many nests there was more than 1 chick and even in one nest there were 9 chicks. It is amazing how quickly they grow up. In 2-3 weeks from when they hatch they are ready to join with the adults in the bug search. Next the bird box monitor pulled out a dead adult purple martin from one of the gourds. Purple martins die for many reasons like pesticides and habitat loss. After carefully moving the deceased bird to dispose of it, we saw a nestling that hatched exactly the same day we were there. It was still sitting inside the egg. Then more purple martin chicks were banded. A piece of plastic was found inside one of the purple martin nests which is not very healthy for the ecosystem. In total 25 purple martin chicks were banded and 10 more were too young and small to band, and we saw many other adult purple martins.
There are many ways to help purple martins. One way is to stop spraying pesticides. Pesticides don’t just kill the bugs they were meant to kill but also many more insects. Not only that but the bugs it kills may be consumed by other animals, which become poisoned. If you want something to kill pests look at natural things like if you have aphids on a plant just let the ladybugs take care of it. Also a way to help purple martins is to keep dead trees if they won’t do harm if they fall down. If the tree could potentially do harm then you could build purple martin houses. These nests should be monitored like any other nestboxes since other birds and animals could live there, which you don’t want because you could be helping invasive species instead of purple martins.
So what are you waiting for, start helping the purple martins!
