Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Purple martins and our backyard adventure

We have the most wonderful purple martin house in our backyard. I bought it off of eBay in February and we've had so much fun watching the martins come choose our house to raise their families.

Yesterday afternoon I noticed a small bird on the grass below the birdhouse. At first I thought it was a sparrow, but upon closer look I realized it was one of the baby martins. Under normal circumstances I would simply put the baby back into the nest and there would be no problems. Unfortunately there are twelve nests in my birdhouse and I didn't know which one my little guy called home.

Fortunately for me the pole on which the house sits telescopes, making access to the nest boxes quite simple. Liz and I pulled the house down and had a look-see in an attempt to figure out in which box the foundling belonged.

My goodness the work all of the martins have done to make the house cozy and secure for their little ones! Each nest box was lined with pine needles and twigs, held together with dollops of mud and lined with leaves. In one box there was a clutch of at least 10 eggs! Most of the other boxes had two or three nestlings but all of them much smaller than my little wayward dude. We finally found a box with two nestlings approximately the same size as our friend and figured he must have come from there. We placed him in the box, set the house back up on top of the pole and went inside to spy from the window.

Sure enough, within a minute the martins had all come back to check on their little ones. The pair that live in the box in question came back with their beaks full of bugs, fed the babies within and took off to do some more hunting. Apparently we found the right nest box!

I love being able to share this sort of experience with my little girl, her eyes get so bright with curiosity and pleasure, she almost vibrates with excitement!

If you live in an area that falls within the migratory path of the purple martin and have not already done so, I highly recommend putting up a house for these remarkable little birds. They provide hours of entertainment, eat TONS of bugs and have a beautiful, trilling song.
posted by GodlessMom, 6:03 AM

7 Comments:

Blogger Meegan said:

Aww, what a great story! (With a happy ending, thankfully!) And these are exactly the types of eye-opening experiences that little 4-year-olds need. I predict that Liz is going to grow up to be super cool. (BTW, when I read your title, I misread it to say "martinis" -- that could have been a good story, too!)
Posted at 7:25 AM  

Blogger BarbaraFromCalifornia said:

A beautiful story...At first I thought you said purple martians!
(this lack of sleep is beginning to show.)

Enjoy the day.
Posted at 8:42 AM  

Blogger GodlessMom said:

Okay, Purple martinis and purple martians! You guys need to drink your coffee before you log on!!!
Posted at 9:00 AM  

Blogger TLP said:

Very uplifting tale.
Your daughter is a lucky kid.You may be "godless," (and I am too) but you have found that god is truly in nature.
Posted at 10:15 AM  

Blogger The Lazy Iguana said:

My cats would love for purple martins to nest here :)
Posted at 10:57 AM  

Blogger dddragon said:

We have six and more gold finches at a time at one of our feeders - they are so neat to watch, with their bright yellow (males) color! We feed a number of other sparrows and finches, starlings and mourning doves, plus the bald cardinal and his mate. Used to get blue jays, but they seem to have moved on ... And we also seem to be feeding plenty of squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks with what the birds spill out.
Posted at 12:05 PM  

Blogger dAAve said:

We had some blue martin's near our beach house once.

No. I'm sorry, those were blue marlin's.

nevermind.
Posted at 8:18 PM  

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