Purple Martins Return
For those of you who follow this column closely and have contacted me to expressed their condolences about the story of the early demise of all 25 of my Purple Martin babies last summer, I have good news. I am happy to announce that one year after the disaster, the martins are back, and they are having babies again. My Purple Martin colony started about seven years ago when I put up an old beat up metal martin house, apartment style, at my lake cabin. I was thrilled when two pair of martins took up residency in the very first spring the house was up. All that spring and summer I watched very closely the daily comings and goings of this largest member of the swallow family. I was thrilled to have my very own Purple Martin colony. Over the ensuing years my martin colony grew. No a lot, just a little bit each year. From two pair in the beginning to about eight pair last summer. Each morning I would be greeted by the martin’s cheerful calls as they swooped into the old metal house. Everything was going great and it appeared that my martins were here to stay. Last summer everything was going great. I had a record number of adult birds and they seemed to be all breeding. Doing my regular checks I counted 25 healthy and happy babies. They parents were bringing in large amounts of insects, particularly dragonflies, to feed the young which provided many hours of visual enjoyment for me. I was having thoughts of adding another complex of houses and expanding my colony to accommodate all these new family members. However disaster was about to strike in the form of a raccoon. Or at least I think it was a raccoon. I never really saw the perpetrator. Over three consecutive evenings last summer, one by one the baby martins were pulled from their nests and eaten. In the morning all I would find was bits and pieces such as wings and tails at the base of the martin house. All the adults seemed to be accounted for and doing well. But now the adults had no reason to stick around. I watched as the adults tried to figure out what was going on. They wanted to feed their babies, as they had been doing for nearly two weeks already, but when they showed up with a beak full of insects there were no tiny mouths to feed. Slowly over a 10-15 day period the adult martins stopped coming back to the colony. One of the nice things about having a Purple Martin colony is they spend much of the summer at the colony. Unlike other birds who once the babies leave the nest they never come back. Martins are home-bodies and they are very loyal to the colony and they return to the colony for much of the summer. Last year I wrote about my martin predation and many readers responded with their own stories of disaster and suggestions of solutions to stop this from happening in the future. I had also heard and read similar accounts of predation to martin colonies and it was suggested that once a predator has hit, the colony often doesn’t come back the following year. They simply abandon the colony. As you can image I was holding my breath all winter and spring wondering if my martins would return. Heck, I even broke down and purchased a new 8 gourd colony kit and installed it late last winter. I really wanted to make my martins feel at home when they arrived in the spring. More importantly I installed raccoon guards on the poles. These are designed to stop a raccoon from climbing the pole and getting to the nestlings. I was delighted when this spring the martins showed up and immediately accepted the new housing options along with the old housing and got down to having babies. Now I have at least 15 pair of martins and nesting is well underway. I think I may have dodged a natural bullet and I am looking forward to a summer filled with the calls of the Purple Martin. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Facebook and Twitter and at his web page at www.naturesmart.com.
Summer
I love this time of year. Midsummer is a great time for a wide variety of reason. The pressures of spring-time mating is over for the birds and mammals. It is a time of abundance and relaxation for nature. But for me, this time of year is particularly interesting because of the insects at night. No I am not talking about mosquitoes, I am talking about crickets and katydids. Summer nights are thick with mid-night music. The male common field cricket is the responsible for most of the songs. Field crickets are members in the family of “true” crickets. They have large broad bodies up to 1-inch long and have large strong hind legs for jumping great distances. They have very long antennae that are nearly as long as the body. Females have a long needle-like appendage extending from back of their abdomen called an ovipositor, for laying eggs into the soil. Males have large obvious wings that carry them around at night. Crickets are closely related to grasshoppers. There are over 23,000 species of crickets and grasshoppers in the world. There are nearly 1,000 different kinds of grasshoppers and crickets in North America. Male crickets don’t sing with their voice, they sing with their wings. They have two pair of wings (total of four). The front or upper wings are the cricket’s instrument. They play their wings like a violin. The larger hind wings are for flying. A row of tiny ridges, much like a woodworker’s file, located on the underside of the front wings are rubbed against a thickened region, called a scrapper, along the edge of the opposing front wing. While both wings can either file or scrape, most male field crickets are what researchers call “right winged”–the right wing passes over the left, with the right file and left scraper producing the song. Left-hand male crickets are just the opposite. Unlike most birds and mammals, the field cricket waits until late summer to mate. Male crickets sing to attract a mate. While the female is the silent partner, she has excellent hearing. After all, it is her hearing that will guide her to a prospective mate. She doesn’t have ears like you and I. Her ears are located on the knees of both front legs and are sensitive only to different sounds made by the males. Not all male crickets serenade their mates. Some will silently hide within the territory of another singing male cricket waiting for a female that is attracted by the signing male. The silent male than intercepts the incoming female. The silent male is called a satellite male because he orbits around the singing male waiting to intercept a prospective mate. After mating the female uses her long needle-like ovipositor to individually inject several hundred eggs into the soil. The eggs will over-winter and hatch next spring. Only adult crickets in the warmth of your basement will make it over winter. The young hatch into miniature looking crickets and will slowly grow into adults. Crickets grow by shedding their hard shell-like skin in a process called molting. They go through eight to twelve molts to become adults. That’s why you never hear crickets in spring. They are just too small and haven’t matured into singing adults yet. The snowy tree cricket, a relative of the field cricket, is sometimes called the temperature cricket because it’s temperature sensitive. This small green cricket chirps more times per minute when it is warm than when it is cold. Snowy tree crickets sound like jingling sleigh bells. If you count the number of chirps in 15 seconds, and add 40, you will have a good approximation of the air temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. Tonight take a minute to step outside after dark and tune into the magical nighttime music. Until next time Stan Tekiela is a author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Facebook.com and Twitter.com.
Belize
There were thousands of them marching in a well organized line. Nearly all were moving in the same direction with the exception of a few here
Color
Please be advised that my new books, Birds of Arkansas and Birds of Louisiana and Mississippi are now available.
Belize part 2
A very loud and terrifying cry shattered the stillness of the jungle evening. The sound was half howl and half growl and very loud and extra scary.
Unusual Bird
This week while the rest of the country is locked in the grip of a arctic deep freeze, I had a chance to wonder the desert and mountain
Porcupine
The winding mountain road was covered with a thick compact layer of snow forming a solid ice sheet–and it was slick.
Yellowstone
The winding mountain road was covered with a thick compact layer of snow forming a solid ice sheet–and it was slick.
Stan is now on Twitter
I want to personally invite everyone to follow me on twitter at twitter.com/stantekiela. I will be tweeting from the field on during my photographic adventures.
Bobcat encounter
I am proud to announce the release of my new book titled; A Year in Nature with Stan Tekiela. See below.