BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
A REALLY BIG SWALLOW
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw
"Cheep - Churk - Churkle - Churk!" What a sound to hear coming in the dining room window! Yet I knew exactly what it was. The bird books describe the call as "not melodious, but pleasant" and I thoroughly agree.

Purple Martins

For years my mother and stepfather here in Monomoy maintained a Purple Martin Box at the head of the driveway. This was in the early 80s and for the first time there were martins investigating it.

Purple Martins are North America's largest swallow and are always considered favorites wherever they occur. They have no bad habits to be criticized and their diet is totally insects. If you have Purple Martins around, there will be fewer bugs to bite you.

There are 90 species of swallows worldwide. Most of them are completely insectivorous and catch 99 percent of their food on the wing. They have long pointed wings and most have forked tails. They are extremely graceful and fast in flight, so agile in fact that they seldom become roadkills as so many other birds do.

Purple Martins are sexually dimorphic - you can tell the boys from the girls. The males are glossy dark blue all over, often appearing black. Mrs. Martin still has some glossy blue on her back and the top of her head with the belly shading to almost white with horizontal bars. They appear the size of starlings in flight, eight inches from beak to tail.

Their scientific name is Progne subis. Progne was a Greek mythical heroine who was changed into a swallow as punishment for serving her cheating brother-in-law's son to him at a banquet. Those people did know how to hold onto a grudge!

As I mentioned earlier, humans enjoy having martins around and erect huge apartment houses for them. We were looking at a grand example of this on Eel Point Road the other day. The martin house we used to have in Monomoy is now for rent out at Edith Andrews' place in Madaket. That one has four compartments in it.

Martins are communal nesters and like to nest in close proximity to others of their kind. Originally the native Americans would hang hollowed out gourds on a crossbar. Before there were humans around, martins had to compete for nesting holes with woodpeckers and bluebirds.

For the last hundred years or so they've have new competition. House Sparrows and starlings were imported from Europe by a group of people wanting to establish every Shakespearean bird in America. It's unfortunate that these are the only two that took. Both these species are hole nesters and are extremely aggressive and tenacious.

In Monomoy, it wasn't long before starlings displaced the Purple Martins from their home. It turned out the starlings didn't stay either. They just didn't want the martins around. Edith Andrews reports a similar experience with a martin house she had while living at the University of Massachusetts Field Station in Quaise. We've never actually had Purple Martins nest successfully on Nantucket but we can always hope.

Purple Martins do nest over most of the U.S. and southern Canada. Some towns are famous for hosting them, Greencastle, Pennsylvania for instance. They've put up martin houses all around the downtown area and the martins seem to prefer the hustle and bustle there to people's backyards.

The highest known nesting site was atop a 130- foot flagpole in Seattle, Washington. The gold ball at the top developed a crack in it that appealed to Purple Martins and generations of them nested there until the ball was finally replaced. Most martins nest 20 to 40 feet in the air although an 'apartment' tree in Florida once hosted ten or more pairs almost to ground level.

Martins lay four or five eggs and both parents share duty as the young mature. It was commented that when a parent arrives near the nest hole the young birds' yellow beaks blossom like daffodils from the doorway.

Many martin houses have a little front porch for a runway in front of the hole. I read about an opportunistic Screech Owl that would land on the porch and then lie on its side, head to the sky, as it stuck its leg in and probed until it could catch a hapless youngster. That owl eventually cleaned out the whole nest box.

Purple Martins are long distance fliers and depart our climes early. The latest New England record is September 30. In August they collect into huge flocks of many thousands. Cape May, New Jersey is a famous spot for this, making it a birding tourist attraction.

By mid-December virtually all Purple Martins have left the U.S. on the way to their wintering grounds in the Amazon basin of Brazil. Most of the New England birds come and go through the Florida peninsula. We have three specimens in the bird collection at the Maria Mitchell Association; all very early ones perhaps indicating they were young birds lost on their first migrations. One was found dead right here in Monomoy by my stepfather, Art Orleans back in early April 1970.

If you want to try to attract martins, the secret is not to put the box up too early. If you do, sparrows and starlings will claim it before the martins even reach Florida. It's still worth the effort to try though. You

may host the first nesting martins on Nantucket. I

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles. If you enjoy 'social' birding, join the Nantucket Bird Club at 8 a.m. Sundays in front of Nantucket High School for a two to three hour birding trip. Call 228-1693 for more information. To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 1-781-259- 8805. Find more about Birding Nantucket on the web at http://k-blackshaw.com/BN/BN.htm.