Purple Martin School Comes to Cape Coral

After two successful seasons of purple martins at our local park, the Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife decided it was time to make a bigger statement for the purple martins in our City.  With the help of a grant from PMCA we installed a 12 gourd aluminum rack with pulley system.  We wanted a rack which would be easy to raise and lower for education purposes.  We really wanted to start educating the local children about these special local birds.  Cape Coral, Florida is an ideal place for purple martins as we are a warm tropical climate with lots of insect food nearly all year.  Cape Coral is also a City built on over 400 miles of canals.  Almost any good purple martin shelter erected on a residential dock will easily attract purple martins the first season.  Another plus for the purple martin and the landlord in our community is the lack of house sparrow competitors in the area.  We do have some starling competitors, but they are easily discouraged by crescent door openings.

Cape Coral is also blessed with several families who home school their children. Many of these parents put a great emphasis on educating their children about wildlife in their natural local setting.  One such family were the McDonoughs: six children ages 2-16 and their interested and inspirational Mother, Kathy.  What a delight to see children excited and learning about Mother Nature’s wonders.  We even had a real Easter egg hunt (for purple martin eggs) on the Wednesday before Easter.  All of the children, from 2 year old Levi (who does not like to wear shoes) to 16 year old Elizabeth, who wrote the attached article looked, counted, cleaned, changed nesting material and generally managed a successful colony.  We managed to fledge 27 babies from our new gourd rack system.

Our success can also be measured by the number of new purple martin colonies have been established in our City over recent years.  At least 19 new colonies have been erected and occupied over the past 4 years.  Our local newspaper has published several articles about the birds and our Purple Martin School. (See above) We look forward to the next nesting season which starts with some of earliest arrivals to North America.  Our first birds in 2012 made their appearance on January 21.