Louise Chambers oral history | Briscoe Center Digital Collections

Transcript

Well, good afternoon, David
Todd here.
And I have the
distinct privilege of being
online with Louise Chambers.
And with her permission,
we plan on recording this interview
for research and education, work
on behalf of a non-profit group
called the Conservation History
Association of Texas, and
for a book and a website for Texas
A&M University Press,
and finally, for an archive at
the Briscoe Center for American
History, which is located
at the University of Texas at
Austin.
And she would have all
rights to use the recording as she
sees fit, of course.
And so that is the plan
that I had in mind. I wanted to make
sure that that's okay with Ms.
Chambers.
Absolutely.
And I appreciate
being asked to share
some information and history
about purple martins.
It's going to be fun.
Well, good. Well, I'm very
grateful.
Well, with
your go-ahead, let's get started.
It is Tuesday,
August 9th, 2022.
It's about 2:40 in
the afternoon, Central Time.
And my name again is David
Todd, and I am representing
the Conservation History Association
of Texas.
I am based in Austin
and we are very fortunate
to be conducting an interview
with Louise Chambers, and this
is a remote interview.
She is based in the Corpus Christi,
Texas area.
She has been long associated,
for over, well,
close to a quarter century, with the
purple martin Conservation
Association.
And she is a student
and a steward and
an advocate and an
educator about
purple martins.
And today we'll learn about her
background and experiences
and her insights
about conservation of the
purple martin.
So I thought we might start of
just sort of chronologically, and
ask you if
there might have been some
experiences during your childhood
and early years of
growing up,
whether there might have been some
people or events that influenced
your interest in animals and
birds and, of course, purple
martins in particular.
Well, I didn't meet
purple martins until much, much
later, but as a
child, my family lived
in a suburb east of Cleveland,
Ohio. We were based
right practically on the bluffs
that ran down to Lake Erie.
And the whole outdoors
was where we hung out and played.
We were very lucky in those days.
There was, there were woods
nearby. There was some meadows,
some water,
plenty of mud.
Plenty of mud.
There were places to look for toads
and salamanders and crayfish.
And most of my interest then
was, "What can I find
around my feet?"
We didn't look at birds too much.
But my mom had always been
interested in birds.
And you kind of absorbed
some of that, whether you mean to or
not.
And I remember one year, after there
had been a violent summer
thunderstorm over the lake,
there was a long-eared owl in
the willow tree behind our house the
next day. And it sat there all day
looking very cross and clacking
its beak if we went out to
look at it.
And it was gone the next day.
And then sometimes she would
point out, oh, a flicker or evening
grosbeak, something like that.
But the big deal was playing
outside, by ourselves
or with other kids,
and we enjoyed it immensely.
Did you have any childhood friends
that shared this kind of
interest in the outdoors?
All of us played outside,
and I remember running through what
we called the meadow, which was,
I guess, several vacant lots, an
undeveloped area, that would be
really thick with goldenrod
and Queen Anne's lace and all kinds
of flowers later in the summer, and
roaring through there and catching
grasshoppers and making them spit
tobacco, that sort of thing.
And swinging on
vines over a bit of a ravine
and riding
our bikes up and down the street.
So, you know, there were
neighborhood kids all over and
my siblings.
We didn't get into too much trouble.
You know, it sounds like a lot of
this is just sort of
informal experiences and
childhood play.
But I think that your
mom
had, as I understand it, binoculars
and a field guide.
And I was curious if she
gave you any sort of
more sort of academic
pointers about, I mean, you said
that she pointed out a flicker
and a grosbeak, but did
she talk to you much about what she
was seeing and enjoying?
She was, she was, went
one step better.
She showed us stuff.
She would put us in the wagon and
take us along by the lake shore when
we were still pretty little.
And she would turn over rocks and
there would be a whole nest
of ants running around with those
little pupae, and
taking them to safe places.
Or there would be those big red
centipedes and she'd have an old
spoon and pick them up and bring
them over to the wagon so we could
be horrified and fascinated
at the same time.
So she,
her degree was in
science, biology, that sort
of thing.
And so it was, it was second
nature to her.
And she believed in
showing the kids all this stuff,
too. So we were very fortunate in
having a mom who was curious
about nature and encouraged that
in us.
And when I went through my
phase of bringing dead animals home,
there were little shrews that fit in
my dollhouse and so on.
She once even let me boil a possum
carcass on the stove in
our kitchen because I wanted the
bones. So she was a very tolerant
woman, bless her.
I love that.
Well, I'm sure she was delighted
that you shared her interest.
It's always fun to watch your kids
explore with their
own little laboratory experiments on
the stove.
So I think
that when you were
kind to share some thoughts before
we spoke that
you also had some organized
activities with Campfire
Girls. Is that right?
Yes. Yes, we did.
And, and I'm glad we did that as
well, because part of Campfire Girls
was going to a summer camp
and just doing
outdoor things.
Again, they didn't really focus
on nature as much
as I see some of the camps doing
nowadays.
But we were outside.
There were campfires and
cabins and cicadas raining
down from the trees in late summer,
which was horrifying to me.
Bugs were my last love,
the last critters I learned how to
really appreciate.
But the Campfire Girls were good.
And summers, we would go to
our grandmother's, her mom, in
northwest Pennsylvania and stay for
two weeks in the country.
Again, a lot of time outdoors,
helping to pick those big
tomato horn worm caterpillars
off the tomato plants and things
like that.
Being outside a lot, catching
lightning bugs and so on,
even feeding them to my pet toad.
And you could see them blinking on
and off, on and off through the
toad's belly skin.
It was very entertaining.
Nature is if you let yourself
sink into it.
I love that.
So it wasn't
sort of a clinical,
educational experience.
It sounds like something you really
enjoyed and kind of reveled
in.
Nature by immersion,
I should call it, I guess.
Yeah.
Now it sounds
like you spend a lot of time
outdoors and I'm
sure picked up a lot
from,
you know, just being in
with possums and
seeing flickers and grosbeaks
and lightning bugs and toads.
Did you happen to
read much about animals
or see nature
films or TV
shows that might have encouraged
this kind of interest?
Well, heck, this was the era of
Walt Disney.
So we we loved all
the regular, I think it was Friday
night or Sunday night, when they had
the Walt Disney show and they would
have the movies with the animals.
And of course, those were probably
highly manipulated, but they
were fun. And we all enjoyed
anything that had animals in it.
And reading, we had
all these encyclopedias and books
about aquatic
forms of life.
And I can remember just going
through those nature encyclopedias
over and over and looking at the
pictures of all the different
critters, whether they were bats
or birds or turtles, and
reading about them, when I could
read, and yeah, over
and over. A lot of repetition there.
So I guess that helps it sink in.
And it probably further encouraged
my natural interest
in just living critters all around
us.
Yeah, I guess there's a sort of
affirmation when you find out that
somebody is on in the trouble of
writing a book or making a
TV show or, you
know, making a film and
you realize, oh, there's a a world
not just of, of
creatures, but of people that, that
share that interest.
Yeah, so, well, I guess we'll be
talking about birding
a good deal today.
And I was hoping that
you might give us
an idea of how you got introduced
to birds and to birding.
Well, my mom, as I said, had
binoculars, had binoculars, had
a field guide.
I think it was the Golden Guide to
Birds.
And when we our family went on
some camping experiences, she was
the only one who got up early and
went out with a naturalist to look
for birds. And we all kind of teased
her and razzed her about how nerdy
it was to be interested in
birds.
But later that bug bit every
one of us kids.
And for me it didn't hit until
I moved to the country in the early
1970s.
I graduated from, from college,
the Cleveland Institute of Art,
and I moved to rural country,
south of Cleveland a couple hours.
And I was living in a rented
farmhouse out in the country.
A lot of our neighbors were Amish.
There were farm animals all around,
but there were also birds.
There were orchards and ponds
and birds were everywhere.
And that's how I got hooked on
them. I was surrounded by them.
I remember seeing the red-winged
blackbirds nesting out by the pond,
or the day I saw all these
goldfinches eating the seeds out of
the catnip plants that we put
outside a window for our cats.
That was neat to see them all in
there. There were barn swallows
nesting in the barn, and one
day a small hawk hit a window
and sat in a bush for a few minutes
and then flew away.
So we were just, just surrounded
by birds.
And I became more and more
interested.
I found an old, old pair
of binoculars that had belonged to
one of my mom's brothers and
in a junk store, I found a really
old set of hardcover bird
guides for about a quarter
and they didn't have all the plates
and information that books now have.
They had plates of some of the
birds.
But the neat thing was, one, there
was a little tiny bird, a warbler,
hanging upside down from a cherry
tree. I was able to use that
old book and those crummy
old binoculars to identify it
as a Cape May warbler, which was
really exciting.
And from there it just got worse.
I got better binoculars and better
field guides.
Every few years things would
upgrade, and I wanted to do
birdwatching every chance I could
get. I was obsessed and
I was in my, eh, mid to late
twenties then and you know,
it's still there.
It hasn't eased up any.
You know, it's interesting to me
that one of those
early birding experiences
was seeing
this unidentified
bird hanging there and
then, you know, looking
at the cues and the marks and
figuring out, aha, that's a, that's
a Cape May warbler.
And I'm wondering if part of
the appeal for
birding to you is this
puzzle of a,
you know, learning about and
figuring out what is going on, and
what that creature is, and what
its behaviors is like, and so on.
Is that part of the attraction or
are there other things that intrigue
you?
You've nailed it with that.
That is a big part of the
attraction.
There's a bit of a mystery, a
puzzle, and you
use what you see and what you hear,
and then your whatever your books or
research materials are,
you figure it out.
And that is just absolutely
compelling.
And it got to the point where
years later, I was on a trip, I
think, in Arizona, and
the person I was with, I'd see a
brand new bird that I'd never seen
before. Before I could name it, this
other person would announce what
it was, and I was so ticked
off! I wanted to
figure out the puzzle myself.
And I've met other people who
feel exactly the same way.
That challenge, and
then the ability to overcome
the challenge, is personally
rewarding. We must be, have some
peculiar
trait that makes us value
that. But it is so much fun.
It it's just absolutely
riveting.
So
I understand that
you moved to
northwest Pennsylvania
and
started, as
you say, you know, birding with
other people. I guess this wasn't
maybe going all the way to Arizona,
but at least locally with
your regional Audubon chapter.
And I was hoping that you could
tell us about some of those early
outings with people that shared this
interest with you.
Boy, that that was such a wonderful
step for me, was finding
friends who could teach me
things -where to go,
how to do better at being
able to spot and identify birds.
It was fun.
First I signed up for a
just a small local birdwatching
course in the nearest
small town (and they were all
small towns in the area, very
pretty countryside, hilly and with
lots of wetlands, lots of birds,
lots of woodlands).
And then I started going on field
trips with the Audubon Group,
and we just happened to be very
close to a major migratory
pathway.
And boy, oh boy, warbler
migration in the spring!
I was just in love.
And all of these people who would
help me or say,
"Hey, there's this warbler or that
warbler over there. Come on, we'll
go find it."
And then I signed up for another
class through the Edinboro
University.
It was nearby and they had community
outreach and I signed up for that
bird watching class and I just
kept going up, up the ladder.
And later I took various workshops
on learning to identify shorebirds
or gulls or hawks.
And it's ...
learning is fun. I think that's
something I got from my mother - a
good sense of curiosity
and a love of learning.
So this
link with
Edinboro University
seems important in your life.
I understand that one of the
instructors was a fellow
named Jamie Hill,
and I was curious what
he has meant to you.
Well, boy, oh, boy.
My life, my life really
changed.
I mean, we could, we could track it
back to moving to the country and
those first birds.
But
getting to know Jamie Hill
introduced me to the purple martin.
He was one of the instructors of
that bird watching course I signed
up for, and he had just started
the Purple Martin Conservation
Association, or "PMCA",
the previous year, a
nonprofit funded
by donations and memberships
and some sales.
And it was focused on
studying the purple martin,
helping overcome their population
decline through public education
and research.
And he needed volunteers.
Well, of course, I signed up as a
volunteer immediately
and took a keyboard-refreshing
course because I hadn't typed for a
long time and learned to use a
computer, which I
wouldn't have done otherwise.
And so along
with going on more and more field
trips to spot birds,
I started learning about how to
manage a purple martin colony
because Jamie Hill had one right
in town and did
weekly nest checks.
And boy, what a,
what an introduction to a whole
'nother world that stuck with me
for the rest of my working life.
And that's still with me.
You know, it's interesting
to me
that,
you know, the, the efforts
to protect a bird, and restore
a bird, or any creature, often
relies on
office skills, you know, as
you said, keyboarding.
And I imagine there was
envelope-stuffing, and there was
putting postage stamps on envelopes
and, you know, having T-shirts
printed, and preparing
catalogs and newsletters and,
you know,
just all this sort of
non-profit educational
work that goes into
keeping a
group going and keeping its
mission front
and center and progressing.
And I was hoping you could talk
about those tasks
that you filled
at PMCA.
Well, to to start with
you, you certainly summarize them
well. I think you have some
experience in this area.
But
myself and a bunch
of other local
bird ladies, as I will call them,
and a lot of the
biology department
students from the nearby Edinboro
University would come over
and help Jamie.
He had an office there, but most
of the work was done at his home
nearby because there wasn't enough
room in that little, tiny office.
We'd print labels and
put them on catalogs or magazines
or whatever kind of educational
materials we were sending out.
And we would type
in addresses.
We would make phone calls.
We would write letters.
Sometimes we were just putting gourd
seeds into envelopes to send to
people so they could grow their own
purple martin homes.
And it kept us pretty busy.
We always had someone in there
typing, logging data,
getting some research projects going
that way.
And it was, it was a lot of fun.
It was, you know, we'd get pizza
and we'd keep working and
chatting. And we
were right, we looked over
a very nice lake called Edinboro
Lake that had bald eagles,
beavers, all kinds of
ducks until the lake froze in
the winter, loons,
tundra swans.
So there was a lot to
keep us entertained outside the
windows as we did these kind of
drone-like chores inside.
And then going out to do the nest
checks was even more fun because
you got to see how the birds
were progressing from the time
the first adults came back
in April till they all left sometime
in late July.
It was busy and it was
quite, oh,
compelling.
It was just
really interesting to see
the birds develop and all the
behaviors.
That's the most fun about martins,
is being a colonial
nesting bird, they have
a lot of stuff going on, like
you would with neighbors in an
apartment building.
We saw fights
between females, fights between
males,
thievery. One female would wait
till her neighbor left and then
she'd stick her head into the
neighbor's compartment and come out
with a beak full of nest material to
take back to her own place.
It was just endlessly
fascinating to watch these birds
and figure out what was going on.
That's great.
Gosh, you have a ringside
seat to this.
Yeah.
This whole sort of soap opera,
I guess, of these
birds dealing with one
another.
Well, and the
PMCA, while we're,
we're talking about it, I mean, you
were there at the very beginning
and here it is
35 years later.
And I'm curious how the Association
has grown and evolved
over that course of time.
Well, one of the, we still
have, and I'm retired
several years now, but I'm
a "we" when it comes to the PMCA,
the staff is still pretty small.
There's not a lot of cash
flowing in except,
you know, you make enough to keep
going. But it's not where anybody's
getting rich off of this.
It's done out of love
and the clear
need that the birds have for
specialized help.
There is no other bird in North
America that nests in this way
and is dependent on people.
So the best thing, as
the PMCA chugged
along, sometimes we
developed products like a
recording called "Dawn Song"
that's available as a tape or a
CD that people can play
to help attract martins to their
new empty martin housing.
And that we had
some friends, fellow researchers,
some were from Toronto, from York
University.
One was from the Smithsonian
Institution.
He was a senior researcher.
These folks somehow crossed paths
with us in Edinboro, and
they really helped us by partnering
with the PMCA on various
projects, and offering us
encouragement when it came to
banding and later color-banding
the birds, improving
the housing, improving the
methods we used to keep
them healthy and keep good records.
And plus they became good,
life-long friends over the years.
And then it expands.
And pretty soon you have a network
of people all over the country
that contribute help, that
send articles to be published
in the magazine, that share
information from their own colonies.
It became like a giant
family.
And it keeps going.
They moved their location of their
office up to Erie, to Presque
Isle State Park,
set up new housing there and have
more birds. And they continue to
expand in the research area.
And partner with Disney's
Conservation Fund is a big
part of things. Lately there is
research trips to South
America where the martins have their
winter roost and they're tracking
the birds with new methods
as well.
So it's pretty exciting stuff
and it's turning out
valuable information
about why martins might
be declining in some areas and how
we might help them.
You mentioned that
the PMCA
had this
group of friends, really a network
of people that are almost like
a family.
And I understand that,
that there are some literal family
members who share this
interest with you in purple martins,
and that your husband
has
been intrigued by these birds,
too, and has been involved in lots
of martin
work as well.
And I wonder if you could tell me
about that shared
experience that you have with him
and the sort of things that he is
focused on.
Oh, he's, he's something else.
You wonder how someone
who lived in Pennsylvania would end
up moving to and marrying someone in
Texas. It's because Texans
don't leave Texas.
At least that's what he said.
But I remember the
first time he called the
PMCA office, and I talked to
him on the phone about a problem he
was having with his birds.
And eventually
I met him in person at a purple
martin festival in Tennessee.
And after that, we just kind
of hit it off and I ended
up moving down here to work.
He already had a martin colony.
He had a couple of them and was
helping start a lot of others
because he believes in
mentoring, which is helping other
people become landlords, teaching
them how to put up their housing
and how to take care of it, which
is a really important part of
keeping martins going.
If we don't have those people,
boots on the ground, putting up and
taking care of housing, the birds
are not going to thrive no matter
what.
So, besides doing
that, he also
gives donations to local
conservation groups to help them put
up housing at locations.
He got himself trained as
a bird bander and started
banding purple martins and traveling
elsewhere in the state to do that as
well as right here in Corpus
Christi.
And he even got involved in
a special project to put
geolocators,
little data loggers, onto
some of our birds one year, with the
help of some of the researchers
who came down from York
University in Toronto and the
Smithsonian and the PMCA.
So, he's gotten us
into some stuff that I wouldn't have
because he was
not afraid to tackle things
in that area.
And it's, it's been pretty rewarding
what, what has
come as a result of all that.
Well, you know,
speaking of of
learning about these birds,
this might be a good
moment to talk a little bit about
the life history and ecological
niche that the bird fills.
And I know that there's
reams of information that you could
probably talk about, but maybe you
can just give us a
sort of "101
level" introduction to
the, you know, behavior
and
the place that this bird
fills in the natural world.
Well, I'll try to do that very
concisely, because we can't
take all day as would be
easy to do.
They're the largest species
of swallow in North America, and
they only exist in
the New World.
There's barn swallows all over the
globe, but martins are only in
North and South America.
They nest only up here
in the United States and Canada
and dip a little bit into Mexico.
And originally they nested in
natural cavities, either old
woodpecker cavities, or
cavities that had formed naturally
in snags.
And they are also found
out west, west of the Rockies.
They nest in live trees
and in snags.
And in Arizona they nest in
cavities in saguaro cactus
that the woodpeckers have excavated
and then moved on.
So they need a cavity.
And they only eat flying insects,
being swallows,
and they're also colonial nesters,
which is pretty unique.
Cliff swallows are too, but
cliff swallows are not dependent,
as martins are today, on
human-supplied housing for most
of their nesting needs.
Now, out west, they
still mostly use natural
cavities, but they do use some
gourds and some boxes there.
It's a little different.
But here in the east, east of the
Rockies, somehow,
and we don't know how exactly,
the indigenous people here, mostly
the Choctaw and Chickasaw,
discovered that martins would nest
in a dried, hollowed gourd.
Now they used gourds for all sorts
of things, and they probably had
some extra ones, maybe
lashed to a tree near a pond
or something that they might have
used for drinking.
Somehow they discovered martins
would nest in those and they must
have enjoyed them because they have
a lovely song and they're fun to
watch. They eat insects.
So it became kind of a
tradition to put gourds up
specifically for the Martins
lashed to a pole in each
little community.
And when the Europeans
started coming into this country,
into this area, they
saw it and they did the same thing,
too. And they also put up
wooden nest boxes with multiple
rooms, very similar to the
dove cotes that are used to raise
pigeons for the table.
And I bet martins
nested in dove cotes, too, down in
in the southern states where
those were a common structure.
That is so interesting, this
kind of
interrelationship between
the birds and the people and
that that they really became sort
of interlocked and interwoven.
And you think that
that it was both kind of aesthetic
thing that they enjoyed
the sound and the, and
seeing them fly.
But there was also maybe some
sort of, I guess, I hate
to say practical, but there were
some
bug-eating skills
that they appreciated too.
Was there anything else that,
you know, the Native Americans might
have seen value in these martins
for?
Well, some of the early
ornithologists or
other travelers who wrote up
accounts of what, about what they
saw, particularly John
James Audubon and Alexander
Wilson, I think wrote a
bit about that
the gourds, the martins and the
gourds, were for the purpose of
eating insects.
Now, I don't really know that
they could have determined they
were eating only pests because
they eat all kinds of insects,
but that possibly the
gourds were there to protect
furs or meat or fish
that was drying from
pests, you know, maybe vultures
or something that would come in and
try to raid that food
as it dried because martins
will go after and mob
intruders.
I know in my, one of
my colonies right here near
Corpus Christi, we
have some crested caracaras which
are beautiful birds.
And they've learned that if they
land in a certain spot, my
husband will toss some meat scraps
out for them.
Well, the purple martins, if they
have babies, they have a fit
and they dive-bomb them
relentlessly, which the
caracaras don't care for.
We used to have a friendly road
runner, and if he came into the
yard, again, the martins would just
strafe the daylights out of the poor
guy. And at one point, my husband
actually had to help the woodpecker,
or rather the roadrunner, cross
the yard to get to its meat scraps
because it didn't want to go out
there by the martins and get
strafed.
So if they did that
after our bird friends, our
roadrunners and caracaras,
they probably did go after vultures
that came near their drying meat
or hides, that sort of thing.
And they do provide, I believe,
quite a bit of entertainment because
you watch all these social
interactions, you hear the different
songs and calls that
mean different things, and they're
beautiful.
And when you see them skimming
around in the sky, they do some
pretty impressive aerodynamic
feats.
And sometimes they play, they'll
drop a leaf and take turns catching
it as it spirals down to
the ground.
So considering,
they must have found a lot to enjoy
about them.
That's great.
And I guess it's
fortunate for the purple martin
that there is this kind of
appeal for
people and
especially since evidently
martin had been on the
decline for what I understand
maybe the last couple of
generations.
And they, they need they
need the help and the conservation
support.
And I was curious if you have
any insights about
why they've been in decline
in recent years?
Well, part of the decline
is certainly, can
be attributed to weather.
Martins and other aerial
insectivores - think of flycatchers,
other swallows, nighthawks.
And that's just a few.
There are many others.
They're all susceptible to bad
weather because if it's much
colder than the mid-forties.
If it's also windy, if it's raining,
even a light misty rain,
can spell disaster.
If they have small nestlings
that need to be brooded and fed,
well, when it's in the low sixties,
raining, windy, there's
no insects to be found.
Or the adult martins might even have
to leave the nest knowing
that their young won't survive to
feed themselves or die.
So, weather is a
big, big factor in martin
success. And over the years,
as their breeding range has
declined, most
of the northern extension has
probably suffered the most.
And I know there was one particular
event, Hurricane Agnes,
in Pennsylvania, in the early
seventies.
I read that it rained for about
three weeks straight and that
almost all martins in Pennsylvania
died.
And for years, in
fact, even till today, some
places have not got any
martins again.
Because once a
population is knocked down that
heavily, it is hard to recover,
especially when other birds may
claim the housing in their absence.
Other reasons for their decline:
well, one of them may be that how
much of the original forest
we cut down as we developed
this country.
A lot of the standing snags
that provided natural cavities
for the martins were removed.
And so that left them more dependent
on human-supplied housing.
That's so interesting.
These, these things that
happen without maybe a lot of
commentary, or seeing
those connections, between
felling a forests and
the loss of habitat for this bird.
And then years later
you realize, ah, that was,
that was a really serious,
serious challenge for the bird.
So
aside from,
you know, the, the weather problems
that have faced the martin
from time to time, I think
that you also shared
at one point that
there have been some long-term
declines in insect numbers that,
you know, are, I guess, more
sort of
wide-ranging and long-term than
any particular storm
might account for.
Is that right?
Yes. And,
you know, if you go to
pretty much any site
that focuses on bird conservation,
and, or you look up the topic
of
aerial insect declines, you'll
find information that shows
going back to the 1960s,
the populations of aerial,
insectivore birds
declined along with the
decline of insects.
And it makes sense.
There's such widespread
use of pesticides in agriculture.
It's not that we can't
use any pesticides.
We certainly need to use some.
But I think their
use overall is just
sometimes ...
matter-of-fact
recommendations to use them, whether
they're really strictly necessary
or not.
And some of the newer ones are
systemic insecticides.
Neonicotinoids
are one, one group that's being
eyed pretty, pretty heavily as
a source of trouble for our
migratory birds and
our aerial insectivores.
The systemics are taken
up by the roots.
They're in every bit of the plant.
So if an insect
feeds on it, it may be contaminated.
They can contaminate
groundwater where the insects
that come out of that
water are not good food
choices anymore for the birds.
And I don't explain this
particularly well because I'm not
a biologist, but I know that it
is being studied and
believed to be a factor in the
heavy declines of insects more
recently.
Okay. Well, that's important to
know. Thanks. Thanks for introducing
us to that.
So one of the things
that I've often heard people
just be amazed
at with
the martin and,
and I think you suggested it when
you were talking about earlier
your husband's work with
geotagging and banding and
some of the field trips and research
trips that have been taken down to
Amazonia is that
these birds are just
master navigators
and migrants.
And
I was hoping you could talk a little
bit about these migrations that the
bird takes and
you know what you've learned about
that.
Well, it is absolutely
remarkable.
Martins aren't the longest
distance migrant in
North America.
I think there's a shorebird or two
that claims that honor.
But the fact that they
can go from,
say, the Yucatan Peninsula
home to Erie, PA, where they
nest, in something like two
weeks, is just kind of
mind-boggling.
And that wasn't known
until recently.
When you put bands on a bird,
they can be useful if the bird is
recovered or spotted again.
But you don't know where it's
been between when you
put the band on it and when you
recovered it.
The data loggers or geolocators
that they started using about 2007
or so, give us a lot more
information.
They measure daylight
and we did that
here in Pennsylvania, I
mean, in Texas, (my mind is
both places)
in about 2009.
We had this team of researchers
come down to help us
put the tags on some of
our birds.
They needed more data.
And the Pennsylvania birds that
they'd done for a couple of years,
they weren't quite getting the
returns that they were
happy with.
You want to get a 50%
return of those birds
wearing the tags, 50%
or better. Or maybe that
project will get discontinued
because it may be impacting the bird
survival.
Well, when we did it here,
we had to go
out at night after the birds
were in and carefully plug selected
cavities where we knew the age of
the parents, how many babies and how
old and so on.
And then very early the next
morning, you had to retrieve, you
had to remove the plugs, remove the
birds, put them in little bags
for processing.
So we were going up and down these
ladders like ninjas in the dark
to try to get the birds we wanted
without disturbing the other birds.
And our tagging team sat
there putting these tiny little
harnesses on the martins.
They were tied and glued in place,
so this little tag fits on them like
a kid's backpack and
the harness loops go around their
legs so it won't impact their
flying.
And we were able to get all
that done and the birds released
and they went right back to feeding
their babies.
And then next spring we had to find
those birds.
And that's one of the reasons you
put it on a bird at a nesting
colony, because it is likely
to return.
And you have to look for what was
about the size and shape
color of a grain of rice on a bird's
back.
But we were able to get more
than 50% of our birds back.
And that helped
get that project moved forward.
And they were able to then start
doing it in numerous other states
and provinces.
And the technology has continued
to advance and now they have little
GPS tags.
You still have to catch the bird and
get the tag off it, but it records
a lot more data and is a lot more
precise about the location
of where the bird has been.
But with either of those methods,
you create a map when it's
downloaded into a computer,
a map of its journey day
by day, where it stopped and
spent time where it traveled
more quickly. So it's just very
exciting new technology.
And it was first used
in songbirds on martins and, now
it's used on many other species as
well. So the purple martins
were kind of ambassadors
or test pilots for that very
valuable research program.
And it's, it's still
leading to more good things.
Now they're using something called
Motus towers
that, like a cell phone
pings off towers, these Motus
towers get a ping from the GPS
tags and they're getting, again,
more precise locations.
And for that, they don't have to
capture the bird.
It just pings the tower as
the bird is traveling past it.
So this is
very new stuff.
And they're finding where the
martins roost in South America
and just all kinds of good
stuff from this.
That is terrific.
It's exciting to get
a, a view
of where these birds go when they're
not in your,
your martin house.
So one of the things I've
been intrigued with is, is
as much as the the route of the
migrations, but also
the schedule, of these migrations.
And I'm wondering if you're seeing
any changes over
the course of your experience of the
bird, about when
martins arrive and when
they leave.
Any sort of seasonal changes there?
Actually, there are.
And this is something that
researchers are looking at with
purple martins and with other
bird species, too.
A lot of our neotropical
migrants have
changed their, their migration
timing.
And we always said martins are
the first neotropical bird to
return to North America
in the spring. And that's true
because there are other swallows
back a little sooner, such as tree
swallows, but they are not
neotropical migrants.
Martins, though, are going down
mostly to Brazil, to the Amazon
and becoming
jungle birds.
It's very exciting.
They, they used to come
back, say, to Florida, their first
return location.
It used to be mid-January
or so. Now we're seeing the,
typically, the first one will be
reported before Christmas,
before the end of December.
So that's several weeks
earlier. And it may be
not a good thing because
their return should be
timed to sync with the best insect
supply so they can feed, feed
their nestlings and raise more
nestlings.
If the insect cycle,
the plant cycle, and the bird return
cycle are not all
linked up together correctly, it may
be something
that negatively affects the birds.
And so, it's not just martins, it's
other, other species too.
And plants too - I've read
a little - are blooming earlier
and so on.
Departure, though, isn't so much
affected.
Except that
martins migrate by
age. The oldest birds head south
first, complete their molt
of feathers, and therefore
they're the first to return and
nest. But they always wait after
they come back.
And they don't form
a form of nest and pair
bond and lay eggs until it's the
right time of year for good feeding.
In Arizona, for instance, they're
nesting now in sync with the
monsoons, which will give
them an ample supply of insects.
The younger birds that nest later
go south later and return north
later. So there's, that's a good
thing. It means not all the martins
are in the same place at the same
time. So a weather event
hopefully won't affect all of
them unless it happens during the
nesting season.
Right.
You know, one of the things that
I think has been really intriguing
about martins'
migrations are these
pretty spectacular
pre-migratory roosts
that we're fortunate to see
in Texas and I guess elsewhere.
But, but they're really pretty
spectacular here
in the state. And I was wondering if
you could sort of describe
what they're like, whether it's the
sound, or the smell or
just the cacophony
of all those birds?
Well, they're, they're a spectacle,
an absolute
spectacle put on by Mother
Nature.
You know how people love to go and
see the bats come out from under the
bridge there in Austin?
Well, the martin roost
gatherings can be just as exciting,
as impressive and
can draw some good crowds.
In fact, I know the roost in Austin
of martins has been something
that people really enjoy going out
to watch, and the Travis
County Audubon Group does
public education and
helps people learn what they're
seeing.
So these, these roosts come
at the end of the nesting season,
once all the babies have fledged
and they're independent of
their parents, about ten, ten
days to 14 days after they
have flown.
They've learned to feed themselves.
The birds don't head south
immediately.
They go to what's called a
pre-migratory roost.
And it's a big, big gathering.
It's usually, often,
but not always near water
because that means lots of food.
Sometimes the roost is right over
water. Up in Erie, they roost
in a cattail island
in Lake Erie.
Just, they, they sleep all night,
just inches above the water,
clinging to these cattails.
And they come in by the thousands,
10,000, 50,000.
And when you watch them all
show up just around sunset,
you have the beautiful orange and
purple of the sky, and then you get
this wonderful swirl
of birds coming down like
a tornado into their roost habitat,
whether it's trees or
the cattail island.
And there's a lot of noise,
a lot of chatter.
If you cup your ears while you're
looking at roost, you'll hear what
is described as hissing steam.
That is very characteristic
of a martin roost.
So it's something to see and to
listen to and just kind of
awe-inspiring.
And it's like watching fireworks,
except it's birds and you don't want
to stand right under them.
You want to sit back and
in a lawn chair or something and
just enjoy the show.
They are all over Texas because
we probably have more martins
than any other state because
of our size, and
they'll stay at these roosts for
anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks.
What they're doing is fattening up
for the trip south, and they're
doing some molting, too.
They'll lose a few feathers on each
wing and then grow in new ones
before they move on further south.
That is so interesting.
And like you say, just
an amazing experience, to,
to watch.
So one of the ways
that folks watch them
is not just by being there
at a roost site, but I understand
that, that these
flights, especially the emergencies
in the mornings, can even
be seen on Doppler radar.
Is that right?
Yes, it's, it's kind of
fascinating. Well, I think a lot of
this is fascinating, but the Doppler
radar for finding roosts is
amazing.
And what they do is in the
morning, all the martins are leaving
at once and they're leaving
in all directions at once.
And the Doppler radar, which,
and I'm not going to explain this
well, because I'm not
that savvy
to the technology.
The beam goes over the,
over the surface.
And as the martins leave, it shows
up as almost
like a rainstorm, but it looks
more like a donut in red
or yellow.
And so if you get up at the right
time of day and you go to your
computer and you find some of these
spots where you can look at weather
radar, you can actually locate
the general area where
a roost is leaving in the morning.
Then you can send a group out there
to find them the night before
and locate a martin roost
and put it on the map.
There's, the PMCA, has a website
where people record the
roost locations and where they also
report their scout arrivals
every spring.
And it's, they're live maps.
So it's really fun to see what's
going on.
The roosts may stay in the location
for years and years and years, or
they may move after just a few
years.
They're very dynamic.
Yeah.
Oh, so you've
told me a little bit about these
roosts, which I guess can involve
tens, maybe hundreds of thousands
of birds.
Maybe this would be a chance
to talk about something that's a
little bit smaller scale, but
maybe more intimate.
And that's these
relationships that purple
martin landlords have with their,
"their" birds, I guess.
Yeah.
Quotes around "their".
Can you talk to us a little bit
about the shelter
that modern
landlords now provide
and maybe
how it's evolved from what the
Chickasaw and the Choctaw might
have done in years past?
Oh, sure.
Well, first I should mention that
the landlords are
in general a very dedicated
group.
There's a brotherhood and sisterhood
of people who maybe learned from
their grandparents about putting
up martin homes or maybe discovered
it on their own.
But, the original
martin home, the natural gourd, is
still a really good martin home.
They're lightweight.
They'll last for years,
if you keep them painted and we've
got some that are 20, 30 years old.
Grow your own.
That makes them even less expensive.
And you can customize them with
various features, like a clean-out
hatch where you can also observe
the baby nestlings, or the baby
birds, special entrances
that will keep out starlings.
And sometimes people build
in little sunshades
for the very hot weather.
But people like to use
a really wide variety of homes,
and the wooden boxes are still
very popular.
A lot of the Amish like to make
their own, and they'll use wooden
houses and gourds.
You do have to paint those.
And so some landlords like to go
lower maintenance and will use
lightweight metal houses and plastic
gourds, which are the most
recent newcomer to the
martin house world.
But they're very popular too.
And the birds will do well in any
type of those houses, as
long as they meet the minimum
requirements of compartment
size, entrance size
and are pretty waterproof.
And they have to be set out in the
open in the sun because that's,
martins want an open setting all
around. So houses
need to be ventilated and drained
and opaque so they don't let any
sunlight come in.
But landlords love to tinker.
Someone's always coming up with a
better mousetrap is, as
we might say.
And they share their ideas.
Now that the the Internet
kind of broke the martin world open
from just mailed newsletters
and word-of-mouth, to
big, big communities that live
online and share videos
and plans and experiences
and tell each other what they can
do to take even better care of the
martins in their backyards.
Well, this
is really intriguing.
And,
you know, maybe you can
talk a little bit about how
this community of
martin landlords have developed
some, some sort of tricks
of the trade.
I think that you mentioned
just in passing the
starling excluders.
Maybe you can tell us a little bit
about those and how those were
developed and what they do.
Well, in my opinion,
that has been one of the greatest
aids to landlords and martins
that's come along since
someone hung up a martin gourd.
That idea,
well, first I should back up just
a little and explain that there
are two non-native bird species
in North America - the house
sparrow and the European starling.
Both were brought over from Europe
and released here because they
thought they would be good,
good residents of our
country. But it proved out to be an
ecological disaster.
Nowadays, we work hard
to keep non-native species,
be they a fungus or an insect
or a snake to keep them
out of North America,
like the pythons that are eating
everything in the Everglades
these days. We know that nature's
puzzle works best when you keep all
the pieces in that puzzle
and don't add new ones.
So house sparrows
are a little bit smaller than
martins. They have a very strong
beak. They will break eggs,
peck nestlings, and throw them out,
and fight with the adult martins to
take over their nest cavities.
Starlings, unfortunately,
weigh more than a martin and have a
long, powerful beak.
So they will kill adult martins to
take, take over a cavity and
of course, throw out eggs and
babies.
Keeping starlings out
is what was achieved
by using these new entrance holes
that were originally called
a starling-resistant
entrance hole, or SREH.
And it was a landlord,
a wonderful mad inventor type
up in New Brunswick, named
Charlie McEwen, who came
up with the idea of a half-moon
hole to keep starlings out.
He kind of studied the anatomy
of starlings and martins, and
when he compared them, he
could see that with the long legs
that the starling has, compared to
the short legs that a martin
has, if he made his hole
shorter - instead of a two-inch
round, he brought it down to about
an inch and a quarter - starlings
couldn't limbo in there, but martins
could.
So, he tested them and then he
shared the idea with the PMCA.
We tested it, shared it with the
landlord community, and
it really took off because it worked
so well.
If you could keep the starlings out,
you still had to work to
keep house sparrows out, but you no
longer had to worry that one
starling was going to go in there
and kill half a dozen of your adult
martins, which they can and will
do.
And then further,
those landlords that like to tinker,
further refined this.
And today there's about a dozen
variations, all based
on that original crescent-hole
height of one and 3/16th
inches.
And one of the most successful
variations is called an excluder.
The man who came up with that was
from Pennsylvania.
His name is John or "Duke" Snyder.
And it looks like
a telephone receiver on an
old-fashioned telephone or like a,
a Batman signal.
It also has that
right height and it has a few
other features that he added to it
to help keep starlings out.
Both of those entrances are
really successful and are used
on all of the manufactured gourds
and houses these days.
So that's a huge, huge
aid to landlords and to
martins.
That is terrific.
I love this, this sort of
better-mousetrap culture
that's grown up around
the martin landlords.
So, that
sort of excluder technology
strategy
seems to help with the aerial
predators, the starlings.
What do you do if you're a martin
landlord and you have
raccoons, or ratsnakes,
or other terrestrial
predators that may be a problem.
Are there tactics
that you can use to
reduce the harm to the martins?
Well, there, there sure are.
And I always
kind of say that a martin
house or a gourd system is only
as good as the pole you put it on,
which means don't use a little
skinny piece of pipe.
Use something sturdy.
Use a three-inch diameter
pole. A lot of them nowadays
are square and aluminum,
the commercial ones.
But you also don't ever want
to put up a martin house or any kind
of bird house without putting a
baffle on the pole.
A baffle is meant to stop raccoons.
And the original design
a lot of these are based on comes
from the bluebird community,
from a man that figured
out how to make a baffle out of
stovepipe,
quarter-inch chicken wire at the
top, mounted right below
the house and mounted so it
wobbles. If a raccoon tries to climb
it, it wiggles and they just
can't get a good enough grip on it
to get up there.
And there's specifications
such as the size and
placement and plans for those are
available on the internet.
So you just look up baffle for
bluebird house and martin house.
There's a lot of variations there
too. Some of them are PVC pipe,
but you have to keep the raccoons
out because raccoons are amazing
climbers. People don't believe it if
they haven't seen it.
But a landlord I know
didn't put them on because he didn't
like the way they looked.
He went away on a trip and he came
back and he had hardly any martins
left, and he was wondering about it,
standing on his deck, when he saw a
raccoon come out of the woods and
just zip up that pole so
fast, his, the landlord's mouth
was hanging open.
Well, he did save what
he had left by putting baffles on,
but he didn't have to lose them to
begin with. We all live where
there are probably raccoons around,
and a lot of us, especially in
Texas, have a good, healthy
population of ratsnakes around
and they're very beneficial
critters. We don't want people to
think they need to dispatch them.
They do good things.
They control some rodents for us.
But it being Texas, we have some
really big ones here and
they are also excellent,
excellent climbers.
And they can clean out a martin
house and then leave.
And you'll never know that they were
there. You'll just wonder, why don't
I have any martins this year?
So, the baffle that stops
raccoons will not necessarily
stop large rat snakes.
So some people add a little puff of
bird netting right above the baffle,
but the trick there is that the
snake gets entangled and can't get
loose and it's important to release
them immediately or
they will die because if they're in
the sun, they can't control their
body temperature and they'll, you'll
lose them quickly.
So it's easy to cut
them loose. I've done it many times
and take them to the nearest
safe shelter away from your
martin system and release them.
And of course, the landlord
tinkerers who always go one better
have figured out a way to hook up
a fence charger to your
poles, and
the little zap of electricity
won't harm a raccoon or
a snake, but it will stop them from
climbing up and raiding your pole
so if people can set that up
with a fence charger and
little underground cable
in a PVC pipe.
That's what we've done at our rural
location. And it has been a big,
big help. We never have to worry
that a snake will get caught in the
net and die, and we don't
have to worry that our colony will
get wiped out.
So there's always a way to
improve what you've got out there.
But the first step is to put a
baffle on your pole and
figure out, "Do I need to do
something about snakes too?",
depending on your location.
Okay.
Well, so you've mentioned some
of the things that landlords
do, and very creative things
that they do to protect
the martins.
Now, I think one of
the rivals
that you mentioned,
the, the English house sparrow,
is maybe difficult to
exclude with one of the starling
devices.
And
my understanding is that landlords
revert to lethal means.
And I was
wondering if you could talk about
that, both
how it's done and then also
just the, the sort of ethics
of it, because I know that purple
martin landlords
are bird lovers, and yet
they're in this situation where they
have to do something they're
probably reluctant to do.
Well, it is a good
thing to talk about, because I think
before people decide to
spend a lot of money on a martin
system, they want to know the ins
and outs of what are
my requirements, what am I going to
need to do to build a healthy
martin colony?
And keeping the house sparrows
under control is very, very
important.
I know at one of the public sites I
tend here at a, at the local
botanical gardens, I had
one house sparrow, male, that
was just, I don't know if he was
super smart, but I could not
trap him. I have little live
capture traps that go into, inside
the housing unit.
While I was trying and trying to
catch him, he pecked and threw out
55 martin eggs.
So I was really
unhappy that I couldn't trap
him.
And when I did trap him, of
course, I humanely dispatched
him because you could take
him across town and release him, but
he'd beat you back to that site.
And there's really nowhere
to release a house sparrow that's
not going to harm some of our native
birds.
Bluebirds have really suffered
since the introduction of house
sparrows, and so have
any other of our small cavity
nesters like chickadees and titmice,
some of our fly catchers,
and tree swallows.
So,
a healthy colony will be
free of house sparrows and
starlings, both.
And that means you do have to learn
how to humanely euthanize, which
is very simple, very quick,
and painless.
[Pardon me. I had to cough there.]
The quickest way to do it is just
called, "cervical dislocation",
which means
giving it a strong, strong
pull on one
hand, one hand on the
rib cage and one hand on the skull
and giving a strong pull.
And it really is quick.
That's what I prefer to do.
[Cough.]
Some landlords like to...
[Excuse me.]
Use a pellet rifle to dispatch
them. It's, of course, legal
to shoot or trap, either,
because they're not native species
and therefore not protected.
Okay.
[Do you need to take a drink of
water? I don't.
[I'm working on that right now.].
[Okay. No rush.
No rush.]
[Actually, iced coffee.]
[Oh, all right.]
[Okay, I think that's under control.
Must have been some of that dust.].
[Yeah, that's right.]
Well, so
while we're talking about birds, I
understand that one of the
challenges for landlords in
recent years has been this,
you know, rise of of
the Cooper's hawk.
And I understand that that owls
have been a problem as well.
But the Cooper's hawks have really
been a worry.
Can you explain what's going on
there and what the challenge is?
Well, um,
if you look at a range map
for, say, purple martins
and for great horned
owls, there's great
horned owls everywhere in
places where there are no martins
and are martins.
So all of us with a martin colony
live near a great horned owl,
whether we realize it or not.
That's not to say your colony is
going to be attacked, but you should
be aware of the possibility,
or, and if it's not
great horned owls, it
might be barred owls
that typically live in woodsy,
maybe swampy locations.
Cooper's hawks,
where we are in south Texas,
are not.
[Excuse me.
I'm going to take a quick break.
Okay?
[Oh, absolutely. Not a problem.].
[Okay.
Armed with two things of water.]
[Okay. Well, this is a marathon of
talking, so I totally
understand if you need a break.]
[Well, I'm, I'm, I'm
a comfortable talker.]
Let's back up a little and talk
about Cooper's hawks.
Yes, please.
Predation from hawks,
mostly Cooper's hawks and possibly
sharp-shinned hawks or American
kestrels, is
part of nature, and
it's going to happen.
But in some cases,
landlords will find their colonies
under heavy, heavy pressure from
Cooper's hawks, particularly
if they have some nesting nearby,
or the others, the kestrels,
sharp-shinned hawks.
But Cooper's hawks are
amazing fliers
and birds are their normal,
regular prey.
They're, they're always been
considered a woodland hawk,
and they're very agile and can
zig and zag and fly
between branches and things
very swiftly.
But when they learn about
a martin colony, which is basically
a McFeeder for
them, you know, just full of birds,
just the right size to dine
on, they may focus
on that as a source of food.
And if that happens, the landlord
may really suffer because
it's very challenging
to deal with Cooper's hawks.
They aren't in all areas.
And here in, say, where I
am in Corpus Christi,
there are not many nesting
pairs at all.
Mostly we'll see them here during
spring migration and over the winter
months.
And I know that they're here in the
winter because there will be dove
carcasses falling from the trees,
usually the white-winged doves -
that's
a very popular prey for Cooper's
hawks.
Martins are a little smaller.
But if you have them and they're
nesting near your colony, you
may want to take some steps to
protect your martins if you're
coming under a lot of attacks.
People have found that there is
hunting decoys in the
size and shape of a mourning dove.
Some of them even have flapping
wings.
You could put some of those up
on, say, maybe tall bamboo
stakes around the perimeter
of your colony to distract
the hawks before they get too close
to the martins.
You can also put up decoys
of purple martins.
There are some life-size ones that
are inexpensive: put those also
around the outer perimeter of your
colony, not in the center where your
real birds are, but away.
You can make sure that you trim
trees.
You may want to say raise
the canopy on oak
trees in your yard.
If that's too close to where
the housing is, the bird,
the hawk, can ambush them from those
trees. So try to create
more clearer areas where
the martins can spot a predator
that's coming and get
safely into their housing or up
into the air before the hawk is too
close.
I know one landlord actually created
a slalom course to
slow the hawk down.
He put up tall stakes with flags
on top of them, the flappy
plastic triangular flags
that you see at a car lot.
He put those up.
He'd observed the hawk use the same
flight approach time after time.
So he set the stakes and flags
up in such a way that the
martins had time to get away while
the Cooper's was zig-zagging
around this slalom course of tall
poles.
Some landlords will put
some kind of home-made caging
wire mesh around the outside
of houses and gourds
so that the martins are out
of reach of the hawks.
And some landlords will be outside
in the evening when the martins are
coming in, they'll arm themselves
with one of those big
boat horns, it's a can of compressed
air with a honker on top of it,
and they add their vigilant
eyes to the martins'.
And if they see the hawk, they can
honk that thing and alert
all the martins and perhaps startle
the hawk.
I know one guy in the Dallas
area who was smart enough,
he took a martin decoy, put a
magnet on it, and
had a second magnet that
was attached to something that
made a noise.
So when the hawk grabbed
the decoy
and separated the magnets, the noise
device went off with quite a loud
bray and usually made the hawk
drop the decoy and
get the heck out of Dodge because
those large noises were unpleasant.
So all of that's
work, but they can all, they're
are all techniques that a landlord
can use if they need to
help protect their martins
from Cooper's hawks.
That is amazing.
I love the,
this sort of inventive
energy that goes into this
challenge, and,
and I guess the frustration when
you've got
two protected species,
the Cooper's hawk and
the purple martins.
And so you have to, I guess, figure
out these ways of discouraging
what their natural instincts are.
Exactly.
And I'm sure there's,
people will keep coming up with
things that really do help, don't
hurt anybody.
But the landlords, you're
right, they're an extremely
inventive group.
And I don't know what
the key to that is.
Is it that a lot of them are
country people?
Well, here in the south, we have
a lot of city folks who are
martin landlords, too.
So I don't know what the key is,
but maybe it's the fact that they
share ideas and keep building
on each other's successes
or tweaking the failures to
come up with something a little bit
better.
Yeah, well, I
wish them the best - more progress.
Now, I think that some of these
inventive minds have kind
of put their creative
talents to protecting
martins from feather mites.
Why is that a concern?
And maybe you can tell us a little
bit about mites and how they
affect these birds.
Well, there's a lot of
different kinds of mites,
and all birds have them.
Some of them are very specialized.
For instance, there's nasal
mites that live in the nasal
cavities and nowhere else.
There are some that chew on
feathers.
And actually the feather mites
are not such a big problem.
The martins have those.
They have lice.
They have fleas.
It all sounds yucky, but
they've always had them and
they don't usually caused much of a
problem. They, you know, if a
parasite kills its
host, its killed its
food supply.
So those things
are usually in balance.
But the type of mite
that can become a problem with
martins is a nest mite,
and I can't remember their
wonderful Latin name, but,
there are a lot of different types
of ectoparasites
besides all the different types of
mites, the fleas.
And there's blow flies which we
don't have down here.
The nest mites, because of martins
being colonial masters and
cavity nesters, that's
where the problem comes in.
There's normal numbers of nest mites
that won't
cause any real big problems: they
take blood meals off the nestling
birds and the adult birds.
If their population explodes:
maybe it's the perfect weather
or the perfect storm weather for
nest mites. It's hot, it's
humid, and there's all this
debris in the nest.
And during the day, they can hide
down in that, burrow down in there.
And the martins can't,
the adult martins, can't pick them
off and eat them to get rid of them.
At night, they come up and feed on
those birds.
Their numbers can go sky
high. And as one nest
fledges, as the babies are mature,
they fly away, their parents
fly away, all the mites from those
empty nest can pour into
the few remaining nests,
to the point where a gourd that
looked white one day looks gray
the next because it's just covered
with mites. I've literally seen
that where it's gray inside and out.
And you don't want the baby martins
in there.
They will lose so much blood, they
become anemic.
They may jump out to try to get away
from the itchy heck
that is a gourd-full of nest
mites. The parents may refuse
to land and feed them, so landlords
need to keep an eye on that,
especially here in the South because
of our weather.
And if they see a bad
situation with nest mites,
there's a few remedies they can try.
None of them is perfect, but they're
better than not doing anything.
If you're using plastic gourds, you
can take an identical empty gourd,
put some nest material, dried pine
straw usually, in it, move the
babies into the clean one,
take down the buggy one, and put the
clean, refilled one in
its place.
You can just take a paper towel
and wet it with some rubbing alcohol
and wipe down a lot of the
mites that you see.
In a house, you can't replace
one room in a house, but you could
take out the babies, put them in a
covered container, clean
out all the nest material,
wipe everything down with that
paper towel full of rubbing alcohol
and then put in clean material.
But of course, the mites
will go compartment to compartment,
so you're probably going to have to
clean the whole house to physically
remove those mites.
There is not any pesticide
that's legal for use in a wild bird
nest and nothing has
really been tested because
it's not legal.
Companies aren't going to put the
money and time into
testing a pesticide.
Regardless, some landlords use
a very small amount of 5%
Sevin Dust, which is carbaryl,
under the nest material, which
will knock down the mites very
quickly.
But its long-term safety
isn't really known.
And I know that some researchers are
looking into this and
it's used, carbaryl is used, in
poultry farm operations and so
on.
But they're testing, so
far, shows that if it's,
if it's around the poultry house,
if it's, you know,
dusted in the house and so on, it
usually works, it works
its way into every part
of that bird's system,
eventually, into their blood and
skin and so on.
So,
if you've got bad mites, you've got
to control them.
But I wouldn't want to routinely
expose the baby birds to something
that we were not sure of its
long-term safety.
Right, right.
Gosh, what a, what a puzzle.
A dilemma. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, so something else that I
understand is, can be, a real
challenge for landlords,
and, of course, the martins in
particular, is just
the kind of extreme weather that we
can sometimes get
where there just isn't
enough food naturally occurring
for the martins to prey
on.
And so I hear that these
ever-resourceful
landlords have found ways to
feed these aerial
insectivores, which I think is just
stunning. And maybe you can tell us
more about what that involves.
Yeah, it is pretty remarkable.
And I remember
the first few landlords
to kind of fine-tune
a procedure for feeding their
martins and how they promoted it.
The first that I remember was a
landlord in Indiana, and I don't
remember his name, but there was
cold weather and it was
going to continue cold, too cold
for flying insects, maybe in the low
forties or something like
that.
And it was going to continue for
more than three or four days, which
four or five days was the cut-off
point where adult martins will
starve to death with no food.
And his martins were sitting,
huddled out on a perch.
It was sunny but cold.
And he just said to himself, "My
martins aren't going to die." And
he went off to a pet store or a feed
store, and he bought a few hundred
mealworms, and he got
out his slingshot and he
turned those mealworms into flying
insects.
He kept shooting mealworms
past the martins, not at
the martins, but past them.
And he could see that they were
following these little things,
flying through the air.
And eventually one of the martins
sallied out, grabbed the mealworm,
went back to the perch.
It ate the mealworm.
Well, he kept it up, and pretty soon
all of his martins were darting out
and grabbing the mealworms.
He slingshot it up for them, and he
saved his martins.
He kept feeding them that way until
the weather broke.
And, you know, you wouldn't feed
them all day long.
He might feed them two or three
times a day.
It kept them alive.
And so, that was
an innovation.
We all hated when
killing weather came and it was
going to kill the adults or kill the
babies.
But nobody had a way to overcome
it until now.
And then another landlord, this,
this man was in Illinois,
he was very inventive.
And he trained his martins
to come to a little pan
full of insects that he put up on a
stepladder near the housing.
And he would ring a bell every time
he put the insects out
there and they learned to
associate the bell with feeding.
And so when he had bad weather, they
would, they would get fed.
He kept feeding them through good
weather because he wanted them to
remember about it.
So when they had lots of babies and
were needing more food, he would
daily put out some worms and
he also (mealworms), and he also
started offering them little bits of
scrambled egg, which is pure
protein and eggs
turn into birds.
So that was a good food choice,
too.
And those two
stories just kind of spread,
and people started trying it in
their own backyards.
And then one spring, the PMCA,
it was late May and we had a freeze.
We had a lot of martins back
and there was no food.
We got some mealworms,
we got those slingshots
out and we went down to the martin
houses and started slingshotting
martins up there.
And eventually, yeah, they caught
on, and they learned how to eat the
mealworms.
We even put up a special tray feeder
that went up and down a pole with a
rope like a flagpole.
And we could put mealworms in
all of those trays and we'd load
them up. And the martins, they watch
each other, and one
does something, pretty soon the
others are trying it.
They were all coming and just
scarfing down mealworms, the only
food available.
And we ran out of mealworms
and it was a weekend.
We couldn't get any more shipped to
us by FedEx.
We couldn't get any at the local pet
store. So we said, "Well, we'll try
the scrambled egg." And we started
scrambling eggs in the office
microwave and cutting them up into
little worm-size shaped pieces.
And the martins weren't touching
them. They were sitting on the
shingle roof in the back of
the office roof because
it was a little warmer there.
The shingles were dark and absorbed
some sunlight. So we started tossing
handfuls of the little egg worms up
there around the martins.
And as one of those little pieces
rolled down the roof, maybe it
looked alive, like a mealworm,
and a martin dived on it and
ate it, and pretty soon they were
all gorging on scrambled
egg. We couldn't scramble them fast
enough.
One martin saw, another martin
wearing a yellow leg band and tried
to eat the leg band.
I was carrying out a big tray full
of egg pieces and a desperate bird
just skidded through the eggs on my
tray. It was going to get there
first and get fed.
They knew they were on the verge of
starvation, and so they overcame
their normal fear of people
to get their eggs.
And we got them through the bad
week in that way.
And it's not an ideal food
long-term, especially
for babies. It will turn their poop
very liquid after a few days.
But in an emergency,
we were mighty glad that we knew to
try the eggs.
And we also now all keep big, big
bags of mealworms and crickets
in our freezers for emergencies.
You know, who knows?
You may need it for an appetizer
before
the next cocktail party or
something.
Well, you know, it sounds like this
supplemental feeding is
a great plan B when
the weather turns
foul.
And I know that
here in Texas, we've had
a couple of
bouts of pretty extreme
weather, the, the
Uri storm of last February,
2021, this
extended, really deep
freeze.
And then this summer,
just I think here
in Austin, we've had 55
or more days of
100-plus degree
temperatures. And, and I'm wondering
how you, how you cope with this
and whether
you see any sort of trends here for
the martin that we should be aware
of.
Well, both of those
were just horrible events,
winter storm Uri and this
year's drought and heat.
Of the two,
I think the drought is
more harmful because
you can't feed, you cannot
out-feed a drought.
You know, this is so long-term.
We, my husband has been
putting out hundreds of mealworms
and crickets every day.
And there're feeding trays that they
know to use.
And they're shuttling those into the
nestlings as fast as they can.
But, and this is our city backyard.
It's not the best food source.
It's not the worst.
We have maybe three dozen pairs
of martins, two dozen, three dozen
pairs.
So we're supplying as much
food as we can for them.
But we've lost, I think,
more nestlings this year than I've
ever seen.
A lot of them are, I'll know
that this baby is 26
days old, it should be ready to fly.
But I weigh it and it weighs what a
16-day old should
weigh. I mean, they're, they're
going to die when they're that thin.
You, some of the
sites that are in better habitat,
like at are botanical gardens here,
those birds are doing a lot better
because they've got abundant natural
habitat and water
all around them.
So, I hate
droughts more than I hate
the winter freeze.
But the winter freeze was truly
awful.
It killed thousands and
thousands of martins in Texas,
in Louisiana and
in Alabama.
We, online reports
from landlords that shared on social
media - 40,
50, 60 martins dead,
you know, in their housing.
It, you
can feed just a few birds
through weather like that.
And I know one year we got a martin
through five days in the
twenties here because we put hand
warmers in his nest every afternoon
and hid them under the nest
material. And we dumped a load
of food in there twice a day with a
little cup, and he would eat the
food.
But this year,
the freeze lasted a little
too long.
And we had so many martins
back at that time of year
that not all landlords
know about feeding them
or know about how to warm their
housing. And it was, it was pretty
bad.
What saved us.
And, of course, it killed all kinds
of birds and bats and wildlife.
That was truly heartbreaking.
I worried so much about the
hummingbirds and tried to put up
heated hummingbird feeders and so
on. And I know other people did
that, too.
Yeah, these weather extremes are
very hard, very hard for
the birds that eat insects,
and hard for the landlords who are
trying to get them through it.
You just have to do the best you
can and kind of think on your feet.
If when it's really hot, some
people are putting shades over the
housing.
They're putting little ice packs
in a little pouch under the housing
to cool it, without
coming into contact with the babies.
But that doesn't overcome the fact
that there's just not enough insects
to feed the nestlings
and get them out of the nest intact.
But that is why martins lay
4 to 6 eggs.
A martin only has to replace itself
once in its lifetime to keep
the population stable.
But of course, in Texas, we're
doing pretty well overall.
It's other places that are suffering
a little more.
You know, you mentioned
that you also keep an
eye on the fate of
other birds, hummingbirds
and so on, during these
trying times.
And I was wondering
if you could talk a little bit about
what you've learned from
purple martins that can be applied
to other birds that are
reliant on people.
And I'm thinking of the chimney
swift, or I think earlier you were
talking about the bluebird,
you know, where there're these
kind of generations of folks
that have learned how to
help creatures that are,
that are in need.
And maybe
you can talk a little bit about the,
you know, what these
other birds might have taught you
for dealing with martins, or vice
versa.
Mm hmm.
Well, the first thing that
I think of is I think we
have at least 60 species
of birds in North America that
are cavity-nesters, that need
a cavity to nest in,
and most of them can't create
their own cavity.
Only woodpeckers can do that.
So I think
it would be really
enjoyable if more people researched
what cavity-nesters live
in my area.
What could I attract to a nest
box or a gourd?
Because in my city
backyard here in Corpus, we
have had brown-crested flycatchers
nest several times
and that's a pretty exciting
treat to have in a city backyard.
And when you have a bird
box with babies in it, you can show
them to little kids.
And if you want to get kids
interested in nature,
nothing will hook them quicker than
showing them eggs and baby
birds. They just are really drawn
to that.
And it doesn't have to be anything
too big and fancy and expensive.
A bluebird box will host
titmice, chickadees, bluebirds.
The flycatchers need a slightly
bigger hole.
So the woodpeckers often
help us with that.
And we've put up nest boxes for
woodpeckers too.
And in the winter, sometimes screech
owls roost in them, which is
really exciting.
So, if people knew
how much fun it is to help
the birds with just a simple nest
box, I think more people would do
that.
They'd put up a good birdbath.
Not all birds come to feeders, but
they all need water.
And sometimes, if you add a bird
bath, you don't know what you're
going to see. We've had an
enormously long coach whip
drinking at ours.
We've had bobcats drinking at
it at our sight in the country.
It's really exciting to see
what comes along.
And you just have to put something
out there in nature that helps them,
that they need, whether it's water
or a nest box or a source of food.
Now, chimney swifts, chimney swifts
are really special.
I think they are even, in some
respects, in a more precarious
situation than purple martins
because they truly need
chimneys to nest in anymore
in this country, in this
continent.
They used to nest in hollow, dead
trees.
Well, there aren't too many of those
around anymore, are there?
And if you walk around your
neighborhood and look,
unfortunately, most people have
covered their chimneys.
And if you open
your chimney, you could very
easily get one pair of chimney
swifts to nest in there.
And you'll hear their voices talk
a little bit in the middle of the
night. If you get up for a drink of
water, you might hear the parents or
the babies chattering away.
They don't do a bit of harm.
I think people confuse them with
bats and are nervous about them, but
they're pretty delightful.
And when you see them drop
into that chimney, they do it tail
first with their wings up over their
head, fluttering in the air.
They're amazing birds and they
eat probably
more mosquitos than a purple martin.
And they need our help.
So, I think a lot more people
should open their chimneys.
They're only going to be there
spring and summer.
And then you can have your chimney
cleaned and use it for fires.
Their nests are tiny,
and I think more people
should make friends with chimney
swifts. You can put up nesting
towers for them too, but the
simplest thing to do is just uncover
your chimney.
And there's a great website for them
with lots of information.
They're cool birds.
You know, you've mentioned
that one of the appealing things
to these nest boxes is
that they're great
windows on the natural world.
They're great devices for teaching.
And I know that you're
an avid teacher and
that you've been active
at the South Texas Botanical Gardens
and Nature Center and also at
summer nature camps.
And I'm curious what
kind of experiences you've had there
teaching about purple martins, and
what sort of reaction you've gotten
from the visitors,
and kids in particular, that that
you might have worked with?
Oh, that, that is so much fun.
And it's one of the highlights of
my summer.
The botanical gardens here is
a wonderful place.
They have, I
forget how many hundred acres, but
they have, you know, orchid houses
and all of this sort of stuff and
planned gardens and they've got
natural areas, they've got a lot of
water, unless it's a drought.
And so every summer they have a
series of nature camps and kids
of different ages come.
And different camps have a different
focus. There's one on birds, one
on insects and so on, one
on photography.
And when I get to talk to the
campers, well, we'll talk
a little bit about martins.
I'll show them some gourds and a
little martin stuffed
animal that sings the martin's song.
And then we'll go out and I'll lower
a house or a gourd rack.
And usually I can show them
eggs, I can show them little
pink babies and some older babies
and some still older babies.
And the kids absolutely
love it. They want to touch them.
They want to hold them.
I don't let them hold them because
if somebody drops a baby or
then steps on it, that would not be
a happy event.
But because the babies
are young enough to not get excited
and try to fly away,
they can each gently touch a baby on
the back.
And how often does any
little kid get to do that?
It's special for them.
And I can show them how their
feathers grow, how old
they are when their eyes open and
look at their ears, just a little
opening. And the minute you
pick up a baby martin, it poops.
So that's another part of the
program.
I can pick up those little sacs:
they're called fecal sacs.
Your fingers don't even get dirty.
They're like a little kind of a
gelatinous baggie with
poop in it. And the parents carry it
away and drop it.
Or when the babies are really tiny,
they eat them because there's a lot
of nutrients still in there before
the babies have very efficient
digestive tracts.
So I show them the bird
poop and we talk about that too,
and the fact that the parents
might eat the poop and that they
feed the babies live bugs.
And the kids react with
a "Wow" to everything.
And that makes it fun for me.
And I just love
seeing them get excited about
nature.
Well, it's,
I can understand why the kids
give you a good reception.
You're a good teacher.
Well, you, and you've been so
generous with today's
lesson.
I see where we're
going a little long on your time,
and I thought perhaps we could just
ask you one
open-ended question, if there might
be something you'd like to add that
maybe we gave short
shrift to, we skipped over
earlier, something that you think
you'd like to mention?
Oh, gosh.
I
appreciate this opportunity
to talk about martins
and conservation so
much. I mean, this is
a really important topic
for everyone to be a little
more aware of.
If we take better
care of our planet, it'll be kinder
to us is one way of looking
at it.
And appreciating what
we have outside.
And we have so much here in Texas.
We've got an amazing number
of bird species and just
get outside and enjoy them.
Plants some good native
plants that will support insects
and hummingbirds and butterflies.
And then put up a few
nest boxes.
And if you've got a good location,
maybe put up some martin gourds.
You won't be sorry.
It, it's the way to the
future.
And be sure to share it with
kids and with grandkids.
And you will stay
young at heart when you share it
with younger kids, especially.
It's wonderful.
And wear
some good chigger spray and go for
it!
Well, I'm so glad that
that you've clearly made a practice
of sharing this
not just with us, but with lots of
people. So thank you
so much, Louise.
And I hope
that our paths
cross.
I would love to get
to take one of your
visits to a martin house
in person and see
the poop sacs.
And, you know,
I'm, I'm still a
little boy at heart, and that just
really appeals to me.
Oh, well, thank you, David.
This has been really enjoyable
and I appreciate what you're doing,
this project very much.
It's right on target.
Well, it
wouldn't work without people like
you. So thank you very much for
participating.
I guess I can let you go in just
a moment.
I'm going to hit a button
here that says, "stop".
And, and so I may take this
opportunity to say, "thank
you". And
I hope that, you know, this was
a good experience for you.
I've enjoyed it immensely.
David, thank you so much.
Well, likewise.

In collections

Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Fauna Project records

Details

Title: Louise Chambers oral history
Identifier: camh-dob-020355
Other IDs: EasternPurpleMartin_Chambers_Louise_CorpusChristiTX_9August2022_Reel4123_Full-LengthAudio.mp3
Description: Oral history of Louise Chambers conducted by David Todd on August 9, 2022. Chambers is a purple martin student, steward, advocate and educator based in Corpus Christi. For more than a quarter century, she worked for the Purple Martin Conservation Association, and has promoted martins through educating visitors and summer campers at the South Texas Botanical Gardens and Nature Center. She discusses her work with the purple martin throughout this interview.
Creator: Todd, David, 1959-
Contributor: Chambers, Louise (Conservationist)
Conservation History Association of Texas
Date: 2022-08-09
Date Created: 2022-08-09
Resource: Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Fauna Project records
Subject Name: Chambers, Louise (Conservationist)
Subject Topic: Purple martin
Animals
Subject Geographic: Texas--Corpus Christi
Texas--Austin
Physical Genre: Oral histories
Interviews
Extent: 01:42:05
Collection Strength: Texas History
Use and Reproduction: Please contact the Briscoe Center for further information regarding the use of this material.