Richard and I recently suffered through a run of bad luck. Nothing too
serious, just niggling financial snafus, minor health problems, the drought,
and broken air conditioners everywhere we turned. A friend — who was having a
much worse time of it since both she and her husband lost their jobs, broke an
ankle, wrenched a back out, and caught the flu — cheerfully blamed the bad
juju on some weird planetary alignment. Normally a skeptic about these
astrological explanations, I decide to embrace her reasoning, especially after
the purple martin house blew down one day.
Of all the things that had happened, this was the coup de grace. Last
year, Richard had nearly stooped to praying for purple martins to move into his
newly erected bird house. He would stand out in the field calling, “Purple
Maartiiiins,” but they never came. It was enough to break your damn heart.
Then this year, a half-dozen Martins discovered the house, swooped about, and
finally chose their respective apartments. Richard was actually giggling — not
a pretty sight, really — while he watched them build their nests and perform
flawless aerobatics.
When we drove home one windy day and saw the bare pole sticking out of our
front pasture with the martin house lying on its side by the base, it was as
devastating a sight as I ever want to see. It was pure carnage — eggs were
broken, fire ants had begun to invade, and the adult martins dashed about
crying in confusion. Once we got the house back up (secured more tightly this
time), the martins would land on the balconies one by one, stare into their
apartments, then fly off to the power line to think. I thought they would
simply fly away from the tragedy, but slowly they began to rebuild, cleaning
out the eggshells and the fire ants.
Yesterday, it rained and rained. One of our financial snafus was resolved and
the legal wheels were finally set in motion to remedy another money problem. My
scratched and twitching eyeball healed. And all the air conditioners are
humming along nicely. Best of all, the purple martins brought their babies out
for their initial flight.
Richard is not alone in his love for the martin. In 1966, J.L Wade wrote a
book titled Purple Martin, America’s Most Wanted Bird, now in its eighth
printing, which detailed the habits of this insect-eating bird and described a
project undertaken by the Jaycees in Griggsville, Illinois in 1962:
The Griggsville Jaycees decided to undertake an insect-abatement program
but were hesitant to push towards more intensive use of chemical pesticides,
about which there was some growing confusion concerning their safety…. They
decided to see if they could encourage a population of purple martins
sufficient to whip the mosquito problem.
It’s a great book full of purple martin anecdotes, photos of wildly elaborate
purple martin houses built by devotees, and endless purple martin minutiae:
Purple martins can arrive in Texas as early as February 1 and leave as late as
October, and during migration, Martins have been clocked flying 41 miles per
hour on a windless day, and a purple martin can eat 2,000 to 10,000 mosquitoes
per day.
Or for the most current information on purple martins, check out the purple
martin site on the Web at http://www.netropolis.net/wlight/pmartin.htm.
I wonder if any of this bird’s legions of admirers believe it can successfully
predict favorable planetary alignments.
This article appears in July 5 • 1996 and July 5 • 1996 (Cover).