A very old stray {The Old Fella Story}

Speaking of birds, I have a purple martin house and a dozen gourds for purple martins in my back yard. I constantly fight with English sparrows building nests in the houses and gourds. Twice a week I have to take the houses and gourds down to remove nests. The martins have started building nests and I saw eggs in several of the nests on Sunday. I love listening to the martins sing and play around in the mornings and evenings. The martins usually arrive at my location in mid to late January. They stay until late June or early July and then head back to South America for the winter to molt. Purple Martins are almost 100% dependent on man and were almost extinct back in the 1960s until people stared housing them. English sparrows and starlings were brought to this country back in the 1700s from Europe and they have really decimated a lot of different species of birds. I have special half moon holes in my houses and gourds that the starlings can't fit through but the small sparrows get in the housing and will fill the entire compartment with grass with a cave in the middle. They will even build nests on top of martin nests. I lost a lot of baby martins and martin eggs one year because I didn't clean out the sparrow nests quick enough.

Burch