If Adrian O’Loghlen had his means, the purple martin could be given the title of Santa Barbara’s County Chicken (there’s at present no such designation). O’Loghlen, together with fellow birder Glenn Kincaid and different members of the Santa Barbara Audubon Society, has been monitoring the few remaining nesting pairs of martins in our county in and round Nojoqui Falls Park. They initially started their census work partially to check the generally held idea that European starlings had been driving purple martins out of their nesting areas. The species has confronted a precipitous decline in Southern California, particularly for the reason that Sixties, when starlings started to thrive right here — and each species nest in tree holes. At the moment, the handful of pairs that stay in our county constitutes one of many largest breeding teams in Southern California. It’s doubtless that pesticides are additionally taking part in a task within the hen’s demise. They had been as soon as thought-about a typical hen within the west, even breeding in city areas. In reality, in 1923, 12 had been noticed nesting within the constructing of what’s now the Santa Barbara Museum of Artwork downtown.
The most important member of the swallow household, purple martins are gorgeous birds. The male is an iridescent blue-purple, at a distance typically showing all black. The feminine is grey beneath, with an identical grey collar round her neck. They feed and drink completely on the wing. The food regimen consists of flying bugs, they usually have a selected predilection for dragonflies.
There are a number of distinct populations of martins in North America. The jap inhabitants is doing fairly nicely, largely as a result of they’ve completely different nesting necessities than that of their western cousins. Earlier than Europeans settled the east, Native Individuals would hold up empty gourds by which the martins would nest. These days, jap birds nest virtually completely in human-provided martin homes, they usually have completed so for a while.
John James Audubon actively appeared for taverns with martin homes to decide on his lodgings. In 1831, he wrote, “Nearly each nation tavern has a martin field on the higher a part of its sign-board; and I’ve noticed that the handsomer the field, the higher does the inn usually show to be.”
Sadly, martins in Southern California are a lot pickier and can solely nest in pure cavities in bushes. O’Loghlen and Kincaid have seen no proof that European starlings are driving the birds from their nesting websites, no less than not with our native birds. As O’Loghlen instructed me, native starlings are usually early nesters, whereas martins don’t start breeding till June with the younger fledging in July. In August, they start their marathon migration and fly south to spend the winter, feeding by day over the savannas and agricultural fields of Brazil and Bolivia. At night time, they flock to roost within the bushes of village plazas.
Purple martins are loyal to breeding websites, returning yr after yr to their favored bushes. And therein lies a part of the issue for our native birds. The primary stronghold is in Nojoqui Falls County Park and the encompassing space, the place the birds nest completely in western sycamore bushes. Lately, many useless limbs have been faraway from the sycamores due to perceived questions of safety. To compound the issue, due to considerations with their energy strains, the native electrical firm has additionally eliminated some key limbs that martins used. At Nojoqui, the regeneration of sycamore bushes is actively curtailed; if this follow continues, the positioning may have no maturing sycamores for the martins to return to when the outdated bushes finally die.
At Alisal Ranch, the opposite identified native nesting website, two roadside bushes that had contained a number of nests had been reduce down, and martins haven’t returned to breed within the space since then.
For most individuals, purple martins are flying underneath the radar — they’re an unknown treasure. When O’Loghlen and Kincaid speak to park officers and guests, they’re fully unaware of the martins’ existence. That is one thing that the Audubon Society is anxious to alter earlier than we lose these birds as a part of our native fauna. Maybe if martins had been to be designated as Santa Barbara’s County Chicken, as O’Loghlen suggests, extra individuals would take note of the plight of those stunning, enigmatic globetrotters.
Hugh Ranson is a member of Santa Barbara Audubon Society, a nonprofit group that protects space birdlife and habitat and connects individuals with birds by way of training, conservation, and science. For extra data, see santabarbaraaudubon.org.
