The Purple Martin: Everything You Need To Know | ID, Call/Song/Sound, House, Flying, Male and Female

Purple martins are very large, broad-chested swallows, but are relatively small compared to most birds. They have stout, slightly hooked bills, short, forked tails, and long, tapered wings. Adult males have an iridescent, dark blue-purple body, with brown-black wings and tail. Females and immatures are duller, with variable amounts of gray on the head and chest, and a whitish lower belly. Purple martins are known for their aerial acrobatics. They fly rapidly with a mix of flapping and gliding, to which they feed and drink in mid-air in open areas. Martins drink by skimming the surface of ponds and scooping up the water with its lower bill, and feed by hunting aerial insects such as mosquitoes, beetles, flies, dragonflies, and moths. Because of this, they are much sought after by humans for controlling annoying insect populations. They also often feed higher in the air than other swallows, which can make them tough to spot. Purple martins are also known for living in man-made houses. This behavior trait goes as far back as a few centuries ago or more. Ornithologists believe that Native American tribes hung up empty gourds for purple martins before Europeans arrived in North America. When the first European settlers arrived and learned about the friendly birds, they built birdhouses for them, and North Americans have been hosting purple martins ever since. Whether it be for the birds' happy-sounding songs, or tendency to eat flies that buzzed around drying meat, people loved purple martins, and purple martins loved their new homes. Purple martins are colonial, with dozens of martins nesting in the same spot. In these spots, and in flight, martins display a call that sounds like this. In the east, purple martins nest almost exclusively in nest boxes and martin houses, peering from the entrances and chirping from the rooftops all summer long. In the west, you will find them nesting in natural cavities such as an abandoned woodpecker hole in a dead snag. Wintering in Brazil, Bolivia, and parts of Peru, purple martins migrate to North America in the spring to breed. Spring migration is somewhat staggered, with arrivals in southern areas such as Florida and Texas in January, but showing up in the northern United States in April, and in Canada as late as May. Arrival date to the breeding grounds tends to correlate directly with age. Despite the term scout used for the first returning purple martins, the first arriving individuals are not checking out the area to make sure it is safe for the rest of the group. They are the older martins returning to areas where they nested before. Martins returning north to breed for the first time come back several weeks later. The early return of the older individuals is a common occurrence in species of migratory birds. Fall migration is also staggered, as birds head south when the breeding season is over. Some birds leave as early as July, and others stay as late as October. In late summer, you might see enormous roosts of purple martins, particularly in the southeast as they prepare to cross the Gulf of Mexico. They form such dense gatherings that you can easily see them on weather radar. Purple martins are generally known to raise only a single brood. The average clutch size is 4-6 eggs per nest. Females lay one egg a day, and incubation begins when the penultimate egg is laid. Incubation lasts 15-16 days, and the female is the main incubator, with some help from the male. Hatching occurs over the course of 2-3 days. Fledging, which is when the young leave the nest, occurs between 26 and 32 days after hatch day. Fledglings will continue to receive care from both parents for up to a month after fledging. Purple martins suffered a severe population crash in the 20th century, widely linked to the release and spread of European starlings in North America. European starlings and house sparrows aggressively compete with martins for nest cavities. Where purple martins once gathered by the thousands, by the 1980s they had all but disappeared. Thankfully, conservation efforts and rise of human assistance through the form of man-made houses stabilized purple martin populations since then. Well there you have it everyone, this has been everything you need to know about the purple martin. I hope you found yourself enjoying the video and learning something new. Sorry this one took so long to come out, I've been really busy with school and a big storm just hit my area. I'll do my best to keep posting regularly, and I'll see y'all next time. Take care.