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Song of the South

By Annette Codding
    Let me set the stage, or garden plot, for you. It's early morning, the fog is hanging low over the ponds, the dew is heavy on the grass and the air is cool. The sun hasn't peeked over the trees yet and everything is fresh. There's a song in the air, but it's not the old hymn "In the Garden". This one is sung by the Purple Martins who have come to live here and it fills the morning with a cheeriness I didn't know was missing.
    I have always loved seeing the tall sets of gourds hanging around properties, mostly in the country and in open spaces. I knew they were birdhouses, but I had no knowledge about the kinds of birds that lived there until I decided I wanted one of my own a few years ago. It turns out that Purple Martins are actually picky little songbirds. They are also mosquito eaters, which is another reason to want them around.
    Purple Martins are the largest bird in the swallow family. The adult males are all black and have an iridescent purple sheen to their feathers. The juveniles and adult females are dark with a dusky gray belly. They nest in cavities which is why putting up the gourds and other specialized houses will attract them. I wondered where they lived before people started putting up houses, but it turns out that they have just recently moved to this part of the country. They are native to the west where they nest in holes in cacti and rocky cliffs.
    But we lack those here so a gourd house is what the population have grown accustomed to. And it’s pretty simple to grow some gourds. Pop the seed in the ground and let it go. A couple of years ago, I planted some on a fence. We had a big gourd crop that year and I collected and used several of them, but a lot of the smaller ones got left out there and broke open to let the seeds grow. A few of those seeds found their way to a compost pile and they thrived. A few short months later, the gourd vines had completely covered the pile and there were more than a dozen nice big gourds peeking out from the carpet of leaves.
    This year, I will plant more, but will plant them back on the fence and try to grow especially big gourds just for the birds. To do this I will put down a thick layer of compost and plant in that, then only leave two or three gourds per vine by pinching off the smaller ones.
    So last fall I finally got around to putting up a rack of gourds for Purple Martins. The hard part about these birds is that they are super picky and have to just happen to find your houses. Purple Martins don’t live here year-round and return to the South early in the year. The adults always go back to where they nested the year before. So, we wait and hope that some juveniles will stumble upon my place.
    And that they did! One morning in Mid-March I was working at the garden and noticed a new bird sound. There were about 7 or 8 of these birds flying around and pretty much checking out the gourds. They did this all morning, then after a while they just disappeared. But the next morning they were back and have been here ever since. At least some of them are. We have 4 birds that have taken up residence in the 4 largest gourds.
    We have a permanent colony…hopefully. It turns out that they are not only picky, but pretty sensitive and can really hold a grudge. Remember how I joined that Purple Martin bird group on Facebook? Well, those people have been pretty helpful if you can overlook their dramatic ways in warning folks of all the bad that will happen if you don’t do it all just right.
    They were right about the bluebird box originally being too close to the gourd rack. On the second morning of the PM’s checking out the gourds, the momma bluebird decided that they were too close. She’s half the size of them, but fought with double the ferocity. She aggravated those birds all morning until I decided to move her box down the fence row to the next tall post about 20’ away.
    It was a risky move on my part. At first, I thought she must have babies in there to have been so territorial, but upon taking the box down, I realized it was just eggs. That wasn’t great…I didn’t know if she would find it again with no baby birds begging for food. It took her a bit but she did. I questioned my actions all day as I watched her go to the original post and just look around. But by afternoon she was on her box and tending to her eggs again.
    It’s been a few weeks now and the Purple Martins are building nests of their own. According to “the experts” I was supposed to have made the nest for them using pine needles. Seriously? What kind of birds are we raising here? So, I let them figure it out and just like what happens everywhere else, instinct took over and just yesterday I saw one carrying nesting material into the hole.
    I am also supposed to be checking the nests for eggs. Okay, I get that it is interesting, but besides that, what is the point? I think a lot of these people might do surveys for groups that are monitoring the Purple Martin numbers. But I am not there yet in my birdwatching journey. I'm still youngish though…maybe I'll be a real birder one day and do nest checks and all that jazz.
    One very important thing that I made sure to do was wrap the pole with a piece of sheet metal to keep critters from robbing the nests. They say that if that happens the whole colony of birds will abandon the location and will find a new, safer home. Snakes are known to wipe out entire colonies, so I will also be adding some wadded-up bird netting to the pole. The snakes try to climb it and get entangled then wait for me to come get them. Now that will be interesting. I will be sure to take pictures!
    Well, the sun is now shining bright and I bet the birds are singing in the garden. The animals will be hollering too as I am late for feeding. Do you know what happens when you are late for feeding? Nothing. They don’t die like they would lead you to believe. Until next time, get outside and listen to the beautiful birdsong!