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I live in an area of Kentucky that has a large and expanding Amish population and as I travel around I see more and more purple martin birdhouses in their yards and gardens. Mostly these are made from gourds painted white and now many of them are man-made white plastic ones resembling gourds.
The “gourds”, whether natural or man-made are usually several in a row and have two or three rows of them on very tall poles.
Purple Martins do not eat seed as they feed only on insects and that is one of the main reasons people like to have them come to their yards and gardens.
A big misconception about martins is that they send out “scouts” to seek out new breeding grounds. That is not true. The first martins are simply that… the first martins to arrive back from their winter migration.
I was amazed to learn that Purple Martins belong to the swallow family and they spend most of their non-breeding season in Brazil only migrating back to North America to nest. These birds are monogamous and both work at building their nests. Once the female lays the eggs and the eggs hatch, then both parents feed the young for about 26 to 32 days until they are able to fledge and the parents keep on feeding them and train them for about another 10 to 14 days until they can be on their own.
I had originally thought people attracted martins simply to eat mosquitoes, but I was wrong since mosquitoes are low flying insects and Martins are high flying eaters. They love basically just about any flying bug you would find in your organic garden such as dragonflies, butterflies, damselflies, flies, mayflies, stinkbugs, leafhoppers, midges, Japanese beetles, June bugs, grasshoppers, cicadas, moths, bees, flying ants, ballooning spiders and wasps.
Purple Martins come back to the same place each year unless something has happened to alter the place they return too. That can include predators at their returning nests and that could easily be a snake that has climbed up the pole, allowing Starlings or House sparrows, wasps, squirrels to take up residency and even moving the nesting site.
The best thing you can do to insure they will come back is to plug up the openings when they are gone or even taken them down and storing them for the winter and then put them back up in the same place around the beginning of February.
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries and to take a walk through her pictorial garden or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books, including her new book, “The ABC’s of Wine and Beer Making”. Remember to check out her artwork, especially of her fruits and vegetables. Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site.”
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