"I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." ~Wendell Berry


Sunday, August 2, 2015

My Blue Moon Martins

I still have 2 pair of purple martins here with their young.  Two nests with 5 nestlings each, chirping away, preparing for flight.  Thanks to all the rain through July, there is a veritable bounty of dragonflies, butterflies, bees, and many, many more insects flying these days, so there is plenty of food for them.
I passed by my native wildflower specimen garden yesterday and as I quietly watched all the insects, flitting about, I thought, "hey, make a movie to show this and you can set it to music"!  Then, it suddenly occurred to me - I had all the background music that I needed and as I listened, it made me grin, ear-to-ear as I compared them to human parents trying to get their stubborn teenagers to do something they didn't want to do.  HA!  Even birds have to deal with teenagers!
My 2 pair of adults were flying about, screeching to their kids to come fly with them and they even made a couple of cameo appearances in my movie below.  "It's time to go!" they seemed to say with a great deal of urgency.  Their many different vocalizations made me laugh and snort while taking the flower garden video.  They sounded like they were trying to be very stern and convincing, attempting to get the youngsters to launch.  It's surprising how loud they were - it was even more surprising how loud their kiddos were as they chirped back to their parents, demanding another bug. 
It worked for one gourd as all the young from one of them finally fledged yesterday.  Today, I only see the one remaining pair, persistently trying to coax their young out.  There are regularly 8-10 visitors here every morning, but for such a social bird, they are surely desperate to leave and join the larger flocks at some of the roosts.
Enjoy the video - both the visual beauty of the insects, but also the beautiful audio.  I think it's one that I'll listen to several times over the winter months, until the next season begins.


2 comments:

  1. What beautiful flowers and butterflies you have, Kathy! And the birds do provide the perfect background music.

    Are the families that are late fledging less successful at parenting, or did they just start laying eggs later in the season? I always wonder about the variations in the amount of time that it takes offspring to grow up and move out.

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  2. Hi Aya,
    Thanks! I'm amazed when I just sit & listen to everything out there! The martins have so many different vocalizations.
    Of these 2 late families, one pair was late getting started and another pair renested - meaning their first set of eggs failed during the really cold spell that we had. They tossed out their old eggs and laid 5 new ones. I think there are so many variables involved in which ones are ready to fledge first - for example, were they more aggressive when the parents came in with food, shoving the others aside, did they hatch a day or 2 or 3 days ahead of the others?
    It's always interesting to speculate but some young will fledge as early as 26-28 days, while others stick in the nest until 32-34 days old.

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