Purple Martins are in the swallow family and the largest member at about 7.5” long. These colorful and acrobatic aerialists spend their non-breeding season in Brazil and then head north during the spring and summer. West of the Rockies and in the deserts they often depend upon the native habitat and utilize abandoned woodpecker holes for their nesting sites; but anywhere east of the Rockies they depend upon human-supplied housing, which is where we, and you, come in.
Now, why would you want to go through the trouble and expense of attracting and keeping Purple Martins? It’s quite simple—they are fun to watch, there is something quite exciting about watching them return and raise their young every year and they are aerial insectivores, which means they eat only flying insects, and quite an abundance of them. All of their prey is caught “on the fly” and includes, but is not limited to, Japanese beetles, June bugs, wasps, flying ants, flies, midges, stinkbugs, leafhoppers, moths, damselflies, grasshoppers and ballooning spiders.
If you have an established colony, you may want to expand or make improvements by adding another Purple Martin House. If, on the other hand, you are just now wanting to establish a Purple Martin colony, we recommend that you read up on how to attract and keep these beneficial birds in your yard with one of the books from our library. You can also read about housing Purple Martins or get some background on Victor Stoll, a preeminent Martin expert with more than 720 breeding pairs on his Tennessee farm, and his recommended reading about Purple Martins in our blog.
