A Summer of Purple Martins and Flowers

With all the rain we've had this year, the purple martins' nestlings have been feasting on dragonflies galore. Fledging began here on Thursday, June 20th with 2 nests and as of now, June 30th, about half of my nests have fledged. I had 79 pair this year (up from 76 pair last year) and currently 71 of those nests contain 313 young. That means there are approximately ~150 new fledges and 158 adults (~308 birds from my colony) filling the skies around Gobbler's Knob....and slaughtering every insect in sight. This year I will have 8 late nests - most of them hatching now and over the next couple of days, meaning they won't fledge until the end of July / early August.
My colony is 13 years old this year. This is the first season, since my 3rd or 4th year, where over half my pairs are sub-adults. It's as if there has been a 'changing of the guard' this year. While my number of pairs is up from last year, the number of young that have hatched and survived is lower and I attribute that to the much 'younger/ more inexperienced" sub-adults that I have this year. Along with that change, has come the inevitable passing down of the message, "hey, did you know there's also a Great Horned Owl that lives here?"  Yes, she's still here....and she has caught at least 10 adult martins this year and now, with so many new fledges returning at night, we're moving to DEFCON 1 and many sleepless nights until our season ends.
This is a mid-day video of my colony with approximately half the adults still feeding their young during the day.
[After clicking on the video, you can then click on the YouTube link and go to full screen for the HD version].

Below is a video of 300+ purple martins coming home in the waning sunlight. The chaos caused by over 150 new fledges not knowing to which gourd they should return is pretty hilarious. The ruckus heals my heart and makes all the pain, sweat & tears of the season just melt away. Maybe that's the way nature intended it? Ending the year with this kind of party always gives me a sense of accomplishment and renewed hope. Pretty fantastic and fun!

For the first time in our 13 years of hosting Tree Swallows, they are all producing a second brood this year. So unusual - but I'm happy about that! Normally, they've left by now and aren't around to help with the hawks that start trying to take the martin fledges, but this year, the little "Orcas" are helping out and I'm loving it!
The purple martins are not the only ones who have benefited from all the rain this year. Our native wildflower field has been bustin' loose too! We have had way more coneflowers this year. And while the 'Queen Anne's Lace' is a native, it is really annoying because it too has benefited from the excessive rain and is blocking the view of some of the other natives. Nevertheless, we are thrilled with the amount of flowers and abundance of insects they're currently attracting.
This is a video from 3 different viewpoints of our most-mature native wildflower field. I love the variety and how there is always something in bloom here. I didn't realize until after I had already processed the video, that I still had 'image-stabilization' turned on for my camera, so some of the video will blur a little bit, but as I pause in various places it does clear up. I have had this video camera for several years and I still can't figure out how half the crap that I really don't need, gets turned on!!  Bummer - definitely need to practice more with that! 

I have a St. John's Wort bush in my landscape bed that has been spreading all kinds of fertile seed and I can't keep up with pulling all the small shoots that are coming up. Soooooo, if you want a St. John's Wort bush or some seed, contact me! I'll let you have all you want - but you have to dig it out. Ha!  The bonus is that the bumblebees absolutely LOVE St. John's Wort. It's hard to get a good video of the bumblebees because they move so quickly - but in this video, you can see the prolific blooms on the St. John's Wort too.

Lastly, a quick tour of our savanna area - scattered oak trees with broken sunlight. We planted this area in December 2014 with the Native wildflower mix from Hamilton Native Outpost called, "Shadows & Sunbeams". This is its 5th season and it is absolutely beautiful. The birds are now scattering the grey-headed coneflower seeds and the plants are coming up all around the property.
Come with me and take a tour of my favorite spot.

QUIZ TIME! If you watched all five of my videos on this blogpost, you will find that three of them have at least 2, maybe 3 bird calls in common. Can you name them?