We’ve eagerly been awaiting (and crossing our fingers for) the arrival of Purple Martins to our new gourds, and happily we’ve seen our very first ones this past week. But the best news of all is that there are eggs in one nest, too!
Purple Martins are members of the Swallow family, and they eat flying insects high in the sky. They are known for their dark feathers that have a purple sheen to them. This coloration is most obvious in the adult males.
Purple Martins spend the winter in Brazil and migrate back up to Texas and other area for their breeding season. They’ll head back to Brazil in July or so.
We’ve only opened up a few gourds so far, because we wanted to encourage the first few Purple Martins to arrive while discouraging invasive species like English House Sparrows and European Starlings. English House Sparrows are little and brownish, while European Starlings are iridescent black with bright yellow beaks and orange legs (Purple Martins have dark beaks and legs). Both are non-native “pest” birds that will attack and destroy the nests, eggs, and babies of our native Purple Martins, so we’re trying to keep them from establishing a home in our gourds, and we do this by pulling out their nest material as they put it in. If you see us removing a nest from a gourd, rest assured it’s the nest of a non-native and not-very-nice bird, and not one of our wonderful Purple Martins!
We have an adult pair of Purple Martins that have already laid their eggs. There are five white eggs in the nest. The mama bird laid one egg per day until she laid the fifth and final egg on April 16. It will take about 16 days for the young to hatch.
We expect the babies to hatch around the first week of May. We will keep you updated with pictures!
By the way, have you ever listened to Purple Martins sing? They have a beautiful voice!
We here at Purple Martin Propagators 512-825-4712 are glad to see your first mating pair of martins. Usually, however, it can take several seasons before the housing system will finally get completely filled. This is because the martins are wild birds that the established adults continually return to the same nesting colony every year as long as the landlord keeps other invasive bird species from getting engrained on their housing system. This is why all of our installations have pulley systems that make doing nest check easy and safe (we do not want anyone to have to climb a dangerous ladder to do inspections of the compartments).
There are now plenty of our gourd systems here in Austin to finally get our purple martin population to stop its decline (if you go to our web site – http://www.birdhouseinfo.com – you will see that the store bought condo-style housing systems are to blame for the rapid decline of purple martins in the U.S.). The larger volume in these gourds allow for more eggs to be laid and thus more baby martins to fledge from each mating pair.
Thanks for having us install your system,
Danny Sinclair – Owner – PMP
Danny, we’ve got two nests with a total of 9 eggs between them now. So exciting!