The Nature of Things

Purple Martins are among the earliest spring migrants to return to our area each year, normally arriving in late January or early February. They were reported in the area on schedule this year, but I had not seen or heard any over my yard until this week.  On Monday, while working in the garden, I heard that familiar liquid, warbling call overhead and looked up to see three of the birds circling over my backyard. Since then I've seen and heard them every day - old friends back again.   That familiar shape was a welcome sight. Martins really are one of my favorite summer visitors. For several years, we hosted an active colony of the birds in our backyard every summer. We had put up a couple of martin mansions for their nesting and summer habitation, and I waited impatiently every year to see when the first bird would return. All summer long I enjoyed their circling flights overhead. Their voices were the music of the season for me. Unfortunately, all of that came to an end a f...

Male Purple Martin photographed at our backyard martin house some years ago. These are the birds that are our first spring migrant arrivals. The adult male scouts generally start arriving here in late January. None have been reported in Texas yet, but they are already arriving in Florida and Georgia and soon they will be present all across the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. These birds are long distance migrants. Most of the martins that nest in the eastern half of North America fly across the Gulf of Mexico in spring and fall, although some probably take the land route through Mexico. They spend their late falls and winters distributed throughout much of South America and their springs and summers throughout eastern and central North America right up into Canada. By mid-April, they will have made it all the way up into New England and many will continue even farther north. Purple Martins have lived in close proximity to human beings for hundreds of years. Native Americans u...

They are spilling over our southern border by the hundreds. By the thousands even. More and more every day, Texas is being invaded by migrants from the south. And this is just the first wave, the leading edge of an invasion that is only beginning. Over the next few months, these numbers will increase until every tree and hedgerow is alive with these invaders as they seek shelter after a long trip. These first arrivals are already being reported by alert observers all over the state. Every day they are out there scanning for the first sighting of the first scout of the oncoming army. What the observers are looking for is a flash of black, a dark body outlined against a winter landscape. Actually, the newcomers are most often heard before they are seen. A liquid warbling betrays their presence. The experienced observer hears that sound and looks up, searching the sky for its source, an adult male Purple Martin. The Purple Martin Conservation Association maintains a website page fo...

Or perhaps I should say, "The martin IS here." So far, I've seen only one. I've been scanning the skies for weeks, whenever I'm outside, looking for the first Purple Martin of the year and checking the scout reports online to see where they have been reported. They've been all around me, according to those reports, for weeks, but there was no sighting of them over my yard. Then, this morning, I was outside in my backyard puttering around when my ear caught a familiar sound. I looked up just in time to see him as he swept by the martin mansion on his blue-black wings. He didn't stop this time, but at least I know that he knows it's there. So, the question now is, will I have martins nesting in that mansion this spring? Last spring, we put up this new house after removing the old ones we had had for many years, the ones in which many, many generations of martins had begun life. The birds completely snubbed the new and improved housing. Not a sing...

Late January is the time our most beloved swallow, the Purple Martin, makes its appearance throughout much of Texas, and indeed all the states on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. This year some of the birds didn't even wait for the page on the calendar to turn. They showed up on December 31 . The birds usually don't show up in my yard just northwest of Houston until early February, but since they have already been reported in the area, I am on the alert for them, ready to open the doors of my martin mansion and raise it high to welcome back one of my favorite birds of summer. Purple Martins have a long and remarkable relationship with human beings on this continent. The Native Americans were the first to put up gourd housing for the birds. This continued for centuries before Europeans arrived on the scene and took up the practice. Over time, this symbiotic relationship has become so strong that Purple Martins in the eastern part of the continent are totally dependent upon ...