To celebrate our 35th Anniversary, the PMCA is so excited to kick off our Landlord Spotlight. For this monthly installment, the Ray Family reached out to us with their incredible story.
This was the fifth year that we have hosted Purple Martins and successfully fledged 114. In the preceding 4 years we had doubled the fledglings each year since 2017. But we started 17 years prior to that with putting up the first house, then SuperGourds and continuously playing the Dawnsong tape until finally we enticed 4 pairs to stay. We almost gave up but one afternoon, when I was ready to take down the gourds and houses permanently, I heard some Purple Martins and that was it, here we go!
We live in Middle Amana, Iowa and our front yard is a 250-acre pond that attracts a wide variety of birds but not PurpleMartins. We are very active bird watchers and thought martin houses would be a perfect project when we purchased the house in 1997. We did not know too much about martins, so we learned what we could from the PMCA and other sources and put up a house in 2000. The closest colonies that we knew of were between 25 and 40 miles away, so we knew we had our work cut out for us.
The other point of interest is the area that we are in. Middle Amana is part of the Amana Colonies, a 25,000-acre National Historic Landmark District in central Iowa; it is the largest farm and largest forest in Iowa. Amana started as a religious communal group in Iowa in 1855 after coming here from Buffalo NY and from Germany in the late 1700’s. They abandoned the communal system in 1932 but the area remains an interesting combination of industry, tourism and history. During communal times and through the 1970’s, the majority of Amana homes had Purple Martin houses in their yards. When we moved here in 1980, we saw two martins and thought that was interesting. But since then, they have been absent from the landscape, so it was a necessary re-introduction project.
We hoped that by trying our hand at being a Purple Martin landlord, we could accomplish a variety of goals.
Luckily, we were also fortunate to find a farmer 15 miles to the north of us who had just attracted martins back to his parents’ farm in 2016 after a significant absence. He has also grown his colony exponentially since then and is a great source of information and inspiration. It’s great to have a mentor!
Then we published an article in the local newspaper this summer about the return of martins to the Amana Colonies and opened the opportunity for others in the community to get involved. Several residents are planning to put up gourds in 2022, so we just keep rolling along.
It is interesting how Purple Martins become part of your life. Our kids call the Dawnsong CD the “the soundtrack of their youth” because we played it so much (for 17 years!). We love to sit at the picnic table on a summer evening and watch the activity; it is the best show on TV! The weekly nest checks give you a great front row seat to extraordinary bird life with the joy of fledglings and the sweet sadness of the last day when you know they have moved on to Brazil. We love it!
Have patience and inspiration, find a mentor, support the PMCA and keep your eyes and ears open for martins this spring! (I see we have one in Florida already!!)
Dan and Angela Ray
If you are a landlord and want to share your story, please email [email protected].