Purple Martins

The Jamestown Audubon field trip committee organizes some pretty cool trips.  I don’t usually go, though, because after putting in a 40 hour week, I usually have a list of things a mile long that need to get done…  But this time, since I’m getting into birds, and since we had a very interesting presentation at Audubon last spring on Purple Martins and learned about their roosting at Presque Isle (Erie, PA), and since I suggested the committee arrange a field trip to see the phenomenon, and since the weather was perfect, and since… oh well… it just worked out to go… so I went!

After meeting up and getting some dinner, we went with one of the researchers, Tim, to Beach 11 where he set up some speakers in his van to play the Purple Martin dawn songs in hopes of calling in some of the birds. It didn’t take long before the birds started to arrive.

They seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, all at the same time.  One or two at first, then dozens.  Eventually, we estimate there were 300-500 birds on the wire.  It was pretty darn cool!

There were lots and lots of juvenile birds in this flock, but a we did spot a few mature males, too.  Mature males are all bluish-black, where the females and juveniles have white or grayish bellies.

As sunset approached, Tim asked us all to follow him to a second site where we would be able to watch the Martins settling into their roost for the night.  This had already been pretty interesting… But OK.  We’d follow him.

He took us off of Presque Isle, to the east just a bit to where the water treatment plant is located.  From this point, we had a good view of two cattail “islands” in the bay.

What happened as the sun went down was crazy and stunning and ridiculous and something I will never forget.

It’s hard to see in this photo, but when we looked up into the dimming sky, it looked like someone out of sight was sprinkling pepper on us.  As the flakes of pepper got closer, they got bigger and turned into bird shapes that swirled and circled and chattered to one another.

The islands seemed to be magnets or vacuums pulling the birds down.  Some resisted and flew back out, not ready to go to bed yet, I suppose.  If we saw 300-500 birds on the wire at Beach 11, we saw 30-50,000 birds here.  No lie.  It was incredible.

Prior to migration, Purple Martins gather from hundreds of miles around into enormous flocks.  They will be at Presque Isle roosting at night like this for maybe another week or two.  Then they will take off for South America for the winter.

Learn more:

• Cornell All About Birds – Purple Martin
• Purple Martin Conservation Association
• Purple Martin Society of North America

Many thanks to Toni Kelly of A Spattering for use of her pictures!