Communal Colony Bird Nesting Complexes to Use for Backyard Birding

Video Transcript

Hello, welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Petersen, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society Important Bird Areas Program and we’re here this afternoon at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshville, Massachusetts. Next we’re going to talk about backyard birding, a place where everybody has an opportunity to get involved and where many peoples interest in birding first begins. As we indicated previously there are some kinds of birds that like to nest individually and in cavities that would include things like the tree swallow and the eastern bluebird that we described previously. But there are some birds that actually enjoy one another’s company and will readily take to communal colony situations. Behind me here are two different examples of purple martin box complexes, purple martins are large, violet blue swallows that are particularly spectacular as the gurgle and swirl around the boxes. On this side, we have one type where there are lots of individual chambers very close together. In some cases they can actually be part of what looks like a giant apartment house. On the other side over here, we have what look like over sized gourds hanging from a platform, unfortunately we have a house sparrow sitting on top of the purple martin complex here. The house sparrow is one of our invasive exotic species that competes with many hole nesting birds but fortunately here at Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary we do have lots of purple martins nesting in many of these hanging chambers. So this would be a good example of a colonial species that actually sometimes can be attracted to suburban situations but there needs to be lots of open space and there often needs to be water nearby because martins can be very difficult to attract. None the less they do represent a good example of a colonial nesting backyard bird.

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