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Purple martins: Won't you be my neighbor?

Rick Marsi
Purple martins at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge.

Few American birds can be said to enjoy apartment house living. They’re loners for the most part, especially at nesting time. Not so with the blue-black swallow called purple martin, which prefers noisy neighborhoods to solitude.

America’s largest swallow, the 8-inch-long martin has been living in apartments ever since the first European settlers clambered ashore and discovered martins nesting in gourds native Americans had hollowed out and hung from tall poles. The Iroquois and others were smart about martins. They knew these insect-eating birds would keep mosquitoes in check. They knew martins don’t like intruders; that they would chase away any large bird approaching within 100 yards of their nests. Such vigilance would keep crows away from adjacent corn fields and vultures from deer carcasses hung in camp to dry.

Tribes also knew the gurgling and chattering of martins would awaken them shortly after dawn (this in an era without alarm clocks and wake-up calls) and would provide them with an avian musicale on spring evenings when braves were tuckered from hunting and their ladies cranky from chores.

Pleasant music, free insect control, a morning alarm clock, camp security – no wonder the Northeast’s original citizens liked martins; they were worth their weight in gold. The first European settlers observed this and decided to put up gourds of their own. Purple martins and American homeowners have been bonded ever since.

Nowadays martins nest communally in clusters of artificial gourds and in houses that may feature more than 20 apartments. Because male martins are highly aggressive and often claim two compartments, half the units may be empty. The rest will house martin pairs and their young. 

The martin lifestyle is apartment living at its most forgiving. Imagine being a rather noisy person and living in an apartment house where everyone else was noisy. No one could complain about you for fear of throwing stones in glass houses. Not only that, your neighbors would like the same kind of music you did, play it only during daylight hours and go to bed at the same time as you. At meal times, those same neighbors would tell you where the good food was. If a bully showed up, or a robber, the martins next door would shriek to high heaven and warn you.

Granted, you couldn’t ever arrive home late at night, enter your neighbor’s apartment by mistake and expect a friendly greeting, but on all other fronts you would benefit by martin proximity. The conclusion is inescapable: Martins are beautiful, useful birds and a pleasure to have around. Now, if they can just survive in the world we’ve created.

Data compiled by the New York State Breeding Bird Atlas indicate a dramatic decline in martin populations. Exact causes are unknown, but a depressingly wide array of possibilities exist. Increased competition for nest sites from starlings and house sparrows; pesticides; acid rain, land use changes – take your pick of the challenges faced by martins. 

As a result of these declines, martins are hard to find in our area. One reliable location is Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge outside Seneca Falls at the north end of Cayuga Lake. A thriving colony exists there, in houses located next to the visitor’s center. For the next several months, these houses will be abuzz with activity. It’s well worth a  trip there to see it.

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