![]() And much like today, the martin’s pleasant song and aerial behavior is a source of wonder and entertainment. They may have assisted in arousing the camp in the early morning with their singing. ![]() Purple Martins may also have acted as a seasonal calendar for Native Americans with their cyclic arrival, nest building, egg laying, fledging of young and departure. This mutual benefit that developed over time between Purple Martins and humans exists to this day. Documents from the 18th and 19th century indicate nesting martins attracted to these early American villages became excited and warned of approaching strangers, drove crows and blackbirds away from patches of corn, and vultures away from meats and hides hung out to cure. At the same time Indians may have discovered the benefits of Purple Martins nesting in close proximity to their encampments. It would have been adaptive for those young martins that fledged these nesting structures to seek out gourds the following year as breeding adult birds. The gourds provided martins a larger chamber than the natural cavities that were available so they were able to lay more eggs and successfully rear more young. When martins began nesting near humans they encountered fewer predators. We can only speculate how this transition began, but over hundreds if not thousands of years we know that Purple Martins gradually gave up their ancestral ways in a process now known as a “behavioral tradition shift.” They soon discovered martins could be attracted to nest in gourds that were hung with holes in them through out their campsites. Perhaps the earliest Native Americans found martins nesting in a hollowed out gourd that was used as a utensil. How did the ancestral nesting habits of Purple Martins change? It may have been by sheer accident. ![]() In modern times however martins have adapted to nesting in housing provided by humans from multi-room boxes know as “martin houses” to hanging natural or artificial gourds. These birds nested in abandoned woodpecker chambers, rotted out cavities in stands of dead trees, or naturally occurring holes in cliffs and steep banks. At one time the nesting habits of Purple Martins was dramatically different than today. ![]()
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