| from the July 31, 2011 Newsletter issued from written at
Mayan Beach Garden Inn 20
kms north of Mahahual, Quintana Roo, México MARTINS ON THE MOVE I'd gone looking for the recently fledged Common Black Hawk we've been watching but he wasn't to be found. However, not far from the old nest, thirty or so twittering, antsy swallows, I thought, were perched on a snag. You can see what they looked like above. If we'd been up at Hacienda Chichen I'd have called them Ridgway's Rough-winged Swallows and not given a second look. However, so far this summer I've not seen a single swallow here, so I wondered whether they might be something special. Also, these birds somehow -- even with all their twittering and fidgeting -- didn't seem quite as hyperactive and nervous as the Hacienda's Ridgway's. Once I got the picture onto my laptop screen I saw why: They weren't Ridgway's. They weren't even swallows. First of all, even with their dusky chests and throats, they're not Ridgway's Rough-wingeds because their tails are too deeply notched. Then I thought of Gray-breasted Martins, which are fairly common throughout lowland Mexico, but then I began noticing that some of the birds appeared to be completely black with a bluish cast, not just silhouetted so as to look black. In the picture, the bird at the branch's tip looks completely black while the one next to it, in the same light, has a pale breast. These are Purple Martins! But, these days, aren't Purple Martins supposed to be summering up north? Since they nest far to the north of here, and winter in South America, they appear in the Yucatán only during spring and fall migration. In A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America, Howell's fine-print on Purple Martin distribution says that the species is common to fairly common on Mexico's Atlantic Slope (here) during the spring migration from late January to May, and during the fall migration from July to October... So, that's it! Here on the Yucatán's Caribbean coast already in July (July 24th, to be exact) these Purple Martins -- mostly immatures in the picture -- are inaugurating the fall migration season. The birds in the picture are freshly arrived from North America and are headed south to South America, mainly Brazil. Yesterday, Saturday morning, for about half an hour a diffuse cloud of Purple Martins flew along the beach low enough for the naked eye to easily make out their forked tails, and every one of them was headed south. At any one time five or ten birds might be view, so maybe in all a couple hundred passed. After that half hour passage, for another half hour a few lone stragglers followed. So, how about that? In a flash, in this land of eternal summer, my personal general perception of the current season has flipped from its being "late spring" to "early fall," without having ever noticed a "summer" at all. from the August 7, 2011 Newsletter issued from written at
Mayan Beach Garden Inn 20
kms north of Mahahual, Quintana Roo, México
That's Mayan Beach Garden's antenna tower at midday last Tuesday. For the rest of the week no such gathering took place, though the next day at the same hour five lonely birds perched at the very top. In the picture, of the ones on the diagonal wire, only about one in fifteen were black-breasted adult males. from the February 24, 2002 Newsletter, issued from near
Natchez, Mississippi, USA: If you are interested in Purple Martins you should visit The Purple Martin Conservation Association's website at http://www.purplemartin.org. There you'll see that my "first spotting" this week isn't an especially early one for here. By clicking on Mississippi in the clickable world map I found that on January 22 of this year Jess & Wes Engels in Bolivar County up in the Delta spotted the state's first. On that Web page another map shows that the first scouts average arriving at my home area in Kentucky around March 10, Chicago around April 1, and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada around May 1. from the April 8, 2012 Newsletter, issued from near
Natchez, Mississippi, USA:
In that picture an all-blue-black male perches at the left, a female with a gray chest and throat sits atop the box, and a male House Sparrow stations himself right in the middle, because House Sparrows like martin boxes, too. House Sparrows typically are town or farm dwellers. We're so far from town and farms that this is the first time I've seen a House Sparrow at this area, so the neighbor's martin box must have been a strong attraction to the sparrow. In fact, over a million North Americans put up martin boxes and many wage wars with House Sparrows and starlings, which are invasive species from Europe, and which very successfully push aside our native Purple Martins. At http://purplemartin.org/main/mgt.html, the Purple Martin Conservation Association has this to say about the matter:
from the March 3, 2002 Newsletter, issued from near
Natchez, Mississippi, USA: From what I can gather, the answer is yes. At http://www.purplemartin.org/update/StarlImpact.html an article on the effect of Starling competition for nests states: " Inclement weather in the Appalachian Region in 1972 and heavy May freezes in the northeastern states in 1966 and 1967 drastically reduced numbers of martins there (Hall 1972, Rosche 1968), and recovery has generally been slow." Thus weather is hard on their numbers, as are starlings, who compete with them for nesting sites. Before long Ruby-throated Hummingbirds should arrive here. Generally they come in mid March. If you are a hummingbird fanatic you should know about Operation RubyThroat at http://www.rubythroat.org. At that site there are pages on "attracting hummers" and for "posting your data." from the July 27, 2006 Newsletter, issued from Polly's
Bend, Garrard County, in Kentucky's Bluegrass Region, USA: The nice thing is that this monstrosity makes a fine perch each day for 15-25 Purple Martins, mostly young ones with pale breasts. On hot, sunny, muggy afternoons they lounge up there stretching and preening as their parents fly around catching food and carrying it to them. I haven't seen any martin boxes around here and I think they must come from several miles away where some boxes stand next to a pond. When they first got here the young would stay on their perch and quiver their wings as the adult approached, often with a large dragonfly clearly visible in its beak. Nowadays the young are showing more enthusiasm, often flying to meet the adults when they see them coming. When this happens the adult is likely to lead the kid on a little chase, obliging them to try those wings and learn some aerial acrobatics. Other times the parent flies past the approaching young and carries food to the shyer one staying on the limb but probably just as hungry. When the adults fly away for food, often they go so far that I lose their images in my binoculars, so these foraging trips are not mere strolls around the tree, but major expeditions. Everyone talks about Purple Martins eating mosquitoes, and I suppose they do, but from what I see they really prefer bigger prey, especially dragonflies, butterflies and moths. Often an adult returns from a trip with no food. They land on the perch, one or more young hop near begging, and the adult opens its mouth and issues a rough aaaaaaah! call, easy enough to interpret as "Let me alone!" I'll bet that within a week the young will be spending most of their time soaring for their own food. Their numbers are dwindling each day even now. In fact, sometimes flocks of 15 or so martins arrive above the hayfield, all circling the way martins do, but the flocks have two special features. One, nearly all of them are immatures. Two, there is one adult among them calling very loudly, harshly, so that one thinks of a sergeant barking commands at raw recruits, though maybe it's only an adult keeping the flock together by presenting a sound all the young ones can cluster around. I hope no one cuts the top of that Blacklocust tree. For the whole next year it'll rise dark and disconcerting above the tree but this time next year, once again, it'll be just the perfect place for another generation of hungry, pretty martins. I wish everyone saw such limbs not as eyesores but as monuments to hope for another season of stretching and preening. There's a lot of information about Purple Martins at http://www.purplemartin.org. |
