BIRDS OF THE WEST 71 



PURPLE MARTIN— (A SWALLOW.) 



As you are walking up the main street of almost any town 

 in the state, your ear will catch the conversation of a little colony 

 of martins. "Every interpretation of their thought is a melody. 

 Their household words are songs." 



Glancing upward to the telephone wire you will very likely 

 see them perching upon it, the males so deep a purple that they 

 are almost black. 



They will not rest there long for they spend most of their 

 time upon the wing and if you will watch them you will soon see 

 that they have chosen for a home a place within the ridge of a 

 store building which they enter at a knot hole or by an opening 

 made by the weather-warped boards. 



There was a time when a little birdhouse placed upon a pole 

 would bring blue birds or martins to you in numbers, but now 

 the English sparrow exercises his squatter right, and while either 

 bird can whip the sparrow, he doesn't care for the job of making 

 that his exclusive occupation, so he moves on rather than be con- 

 stantly annoyed. 



The purple martin is one of the birds that like the passenger 

 pigeon has suffered a frightful decrease in numbers within the 

 last decade. The birds that live in colonies are the ones that 

 suffer most, 



' ' To kill two birds with one stone ' ' is fascinating and to many 

 people it is bliss to shoot into a colony of birds and cover the ground 

 with the dead and dying. Now and then a fellow will do it but he 

 is the one who fishes with a seine. It takes only half as many 

 letters to spell his name as it does to spell martin. 



When the boll-weevil scared the cotton planters until they 

 feared that the cotton plant would perish from the earth, the 

 martin was one of the birds that went to the rescue, for like all 

 the swallows he is fond of flying insects. Probably there are no 

 birds of greater value than those of the swallow family, and if 

 any man feels that he must shoot a martin, let him do it on the 

 wing for the martin is sportsmanlike enough to take its own game 

 that way. 



