A check of the purple martin apartments today showed good evidence of nesting. The martins seem to be making up for lost time. Many of you received individual emails from me with photos of your nest box. There is still time for more nests to begun, reports from other purple martin landlords in Ct are reporting rebounding after the tough spell a couple of weeks ago.
The martins are using some unusual nesting material this year...we provide the initial pine needles, but the martins are bringing in some longer pieces of tall grass. In addition they are bringing in the traditional green leaves, a sure sign eggs will be following soon!
The bird in the second to the last photo was sitting in the nest box when we lowered the house, since this is unusual behavior (unless she has eggs) we took her out to make sure she was ok, she was banded from a local colony in Guilford (yellow over white band signifies a particular colony)