Purple Martin Bird School

One day in March my mother announced to me and my five siblings that we would be going to a park to study and learn about birds. My younger brothers and sisters were excited about it, but me being a teenager, already knew a lot about birds. I wasn’t really thrilled to spend every Wednesday afternoon doing what we called ‘bird school’.

When we arrived I thought I was going to be bored.  There were a couple of other families there too. We all introduced ourselves and to my surprise we went outside. We walked a ways to a pole with twelve white bird houses. They were shaped funny. I later learned that they are called gourds. If we didn’t put up the gourds for the birds, they wouldn’t have a place to nest. The birds are called Purple Martins, but they aren’t really the color purple. They are black and blue. So we brought the gourds down and put pine straw in them. So that the birds could quickly make a nest. Cheryl, a lady that works at the park, told us that the Purple Martins that would be in the twelve gourds were going to be first time parents. She told us that we will check inside the gourds every Wednesday afternoon. When the birds lay eggs we will be able to count them. When they hatch, then we will count the babies, and look at how big they have grown. I started to get excited.

For the next two weeks we saw no change in the gourds. On the third week we saw leafs in some of the gourds. Cheryl said that the leaves meant that the birds are getting ready to lay eggs. A couple of weeks later, on the Wednesday before Easter, one of the children unscrewed the top of a gourd, peered in, and with wide eyes exclaimed that there was an egg in there. We all rushed to see and looked in the gourd and saw the perfectly, white egg lying on red and brown oak leaves. There were more eggs in two other gourds. My nine year old sister Sarah told me she had thought that the eggs were going to be purple. Our anticipation grew every week. Like a first time parent, we couldn’t wait till the eggs hatched. We were surprised to see that there were no mother or father birds sitting on the eggs. We saw a few purple martins in the sky, but not a lot. Cheryl told us that the birds that stay around are the babysitters. The rest of the flock was out looking for food, which are flying insects.

The reason we went in the afternoon was so that we wouldn’t disturb the flock. If we went in the morning or evening, we would have to deal with the whole flock.

One Wednesday one of the parents didn’t leave the gourd, so that when we opened the lid, instead of eggs, there was a full grown bird. It surprised us all. We went every Wednesday wondering how many eggs there would be. One day I got to open the last gourd and to my excitement and surprised there was five baby birds. We observed that they were only about three days old. We were all so happy. My brothers and sisters were so excited about it that, they told our friends and family. Apparently the news of the baby birds spread to the animals as well, because one week we found a tree frog on the pole, and it was there every week. The news of the birds’ arrivals even went in the city newspaper. We all enjoyed going to the park to see how big the babies had gotten. Like what every parent goes through, one week they were there and the next they were gone. One by one every bird left. We were all sad they left, but we can’t wait till next year and do it all over again. When I asked my five siblings if they want to do ‘bird school’ next year, they couldn’t have said ‘yes’ faster. As for me, a sixteen year old teenager, I can’t wait till next year; because someone gave are family our own Purple Martin house. I look forward to doing ‘bird school’ and I can humbly say that I don’t know everything about birds, and I look forward to learning even more.