I’m hoping to become a landlord. There’s a lovely, shiny new birdhouse set up in the garden, positioned with lots of flight path and great potential for flying insects. The white exterior is just what fastidious Purple Martins want, close enough to the house to be sociable but not so close as to be crowded. No overhanging branches or wires that will allow squirrels access. Holes that are Martin sized, perches that are perfect for Martin feet. All the pieces are in place – except for the Martins.
Establishing a new Martin colony is proving more about waiting and hoping than I thought. Somehow, I believed that if I built it they would come, like legendary baseball players sliding through the cornfield. I thought that wanting the Martins and making preparations for them was going to be enough, and that by putting the house up early I’d catch those “early returners” riding north on the first currents of spring. I read the websites and the bird books, opened the required one or two doors on the house and expected to see Martins within a week. I’m still waiting.
We’ve had some false hope – starlings have come to the house twice now, once right away and once just this week. They’re dark, and about the right size, and I get excited that finally, my Martins are here – until I see the yellow beak that no Martin would countenance and I know my hope was wasted. This morning we had starlings inside the house, thrashing about to get in and out because the Martin sized holes really aren’t quite big enough for them. We lowered the pole and tipped the house on its side to encourage them to leave. Leave they did, both of them, in a flurry of feathers and squawking and wrenched wings as they flew off and gave me up close evidence that they were not the birds I was looking for. We closed and locked the doors to keep the marauders out, and still we wait.
I know, logically, that the birds we want, the juveniles who
are looking for a new home, won’t be coming until later in the spring – early
summer, even. I know that I have to be patient, that good things take time. That
we don’t always get what we want right when we want it. That maybe I’ll
appreciate my Purple Martins (if when
they arrive) that much more. But I’m ready for them! I’m excited at the thought
of hosting a colony of birds, counting the eggs and watching the fledglings.
I’ll happily make them scrambled eggs and buy freeze dried grubs if the insect
buffet is light. I’ll do what I can to make their little birdy hearts sing and
give them a good home. Don’t they know that? Can’t they sense that I’m here,
with my little bird house and my open field, just waiting for them to nest?
I’m looking for ways to improve my odds now – considering decoys and recorded bird calls. I’m certainly keeping the pesky starlings out of the nest and I’m trying to keep up the hope. I know that as we head into April and then May and then (gulp) June our odds are increasing, just based on numbers. But I worry, a little, when I see that waiting house out there in the middle of the quickly greening garden, worry that it will remain empty, that spring and new life will pass it by and that come fall it will be as it is today, just older and still waiting for a family that never arrived.
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