PURPLE MARTIN 493 



The homing instinct in the martin must be very strong, as the 

 foregoing incident well illustrates. One of the most striking exam- 

 ples of a returning martin colony I ever heard was related to me by 

 Alston Clapp, of Houston, Tex, While in his yard on one occasion 

 he showed me his colony and said that the year previous he had 

 taken clown the house to paint it. Something delayed him, and it 

 was not up when the martins arrived. Attracted by a great chatter- 

 ing one morning, he went out into the garden and saw the birds 

 fluttering and circling about in the air where the house should have 

 been., at the exact elevation occupied by it when placed ! 



Elevations vary, of course, some houses being placed much lower 

 (or higher) than others. The lowest I ever saw was a large, rather 

 elaborate house holding a thriving colony in AVarrenton, Va. It was 

 only 9 feet from the ground. The primitive nesting site noted by 

 Howell (1932) on Anna Maria Key, Fla. (3 feet), may be regarded as 

 the extreme in low elevation. The highest that has come to my 

 attention is recorded by S. F. Kathbun (MS.) in Seattle, Wash. 

 Speaking of it he says that "a rather high brick building in the 

 lower business district was surmounted by a tall flagpole capped 

 with a ball. This ball was at a height of about 130 feet above the 

 street. One day when I was watching martins glide above the 

 building one of them flew directly to the ball and disappeared. By 

 the use of a pair of field glasses a check or crack could be seen in 

 the side of the ball, which accounted for the bird's disappearance; it 

 was using the ball as a nesting place. Use of it continued for a 

 number of years, until the ball was replaced by another." 



Walter Faxon (1897) records martins nesting on top of street lights 

 in Cambridge, Mass. 



Another unusually low nesting site was seen by S. S. Dickey (MS.) 

 at Seth, a mining village on the Coal River, Boone County, W. Va. 

 He found that some boys had erected crudely made, one-room boxes, 

 8 to 9 feet above ground, and had painted them brightly, one being 

 red, white, and blue! This same correspondent has also witnessed, 

 as have others, the use of buildings by martins as nesting sites. 

 "While I was in Madison, Wis.," he writes, "I was entertained by sev- 

 eral colonies of martins. They were building in cracks in the wooden 

 eaves of business buildings in the city square, facing the capital 

 building." 



It is entirely possible that in some residential districts martins 

 are disturbed by the actions of small boys, who are thoughtless enough 

 to cause the birds trouble. For instance, in the case of the low- 

 nesting house in Warrenton, Va., mentioned above, the owner had 

 noticed that the birds used the rooms on the far side from his resi- 

 dence, the yard usually being "infested" with boys and dogs I Wish- 



