342 PURPLE MARTIN. 
In regard to the roosting and departure of the Martin no other ornithologist has 
made so close and painstaking observations as Mr. Otto Widmann. In an article in 
“Forest and Stream” (1884, p. 183, 184), he writes as follows: 
“Tt is generally known that the Martins spend the night in their boxes only 
during the breeding season. At all other times they sleep in the open air. By taking | 
possession of a box in early spring the Martin shows its intention to become pater 
familias. All old males take boxes on arriving, as soon as they can find any to suit 
them. Young males, although several weeks behind in arriving, do not show so much 
eagerness to own their own box, and even young pairs prefer camping out until nest- 
building has begun. Bachelors sleep in the open air all summer, but visit the colony of 
their brothers and sisters regularly in the morning and evening, meddling sometimes 
with their domestic affairs, playing tricks, and doing real mischief by annoying the 
young ones. During the breeding season both parents sleep in their box until the young 
ones have left the box. The first few nights the young Martins are often brought home 
by their parents. The weather has much to do with it; rainy, windy weather brings 
home most of them, but as a rule the best parents, those which feed them most 
regularly and diligently, bring them home safest and longest, even to a whole fortnight. 
This home-bringing is attended by much noise-making, and great excitement prevails 
until the young are safely lodged. -The parents do not enter the boxes, but one of them 
watches the entrance until quite dark, when it hurries off in the direction of the 
common roost. 
“Where is the roost? This is not so easily found out. When Audubon saw a high 
old tree covered with Martins after sunset and again the next morning before sunrise, 
he thought he would make no mistake by imagining that the Martins sleep on those 
dead trees all night. But they do not. Those trees are only the meeting place for the 
Martins of a certain district, from whence they start for the distant roost in the willow 
thicket, which they do not enter until it is quite dark, and which they leave with the 
first dawn, from ten to fifteen minutes before the Swift leaves its chimney. 
“The young join the parents as soon as they are able to fly the distance, or, as 
here, to cross the Mississippi. From that moment the boxes are never entered again, 
but their roofs are used for social gathering in the morning hours during the next few 
weeks. The regularity of these visits does not last long; pauses occur; in dry, hot 
weather the visits are short, in cool spells they are cut off entirely, but a sultry, rainy 
term brings them back again to spend a few hours in animated chattering around the 
old home. In the evening they only pass without stopping, but they visit often their 
old hunting grounds in the neighborhood. During the day they are seldom seen after 
the first of August. After this date they appear late in the evening, but their number 
increases rapidly. They collect on tree-tops, church steeples, and other points of promi- 
nence and loftiness, around which they swarm like bees for about half an hour, when 
the air for a mile around is filled with Martins, which now form a whirling body of 
many thousand, rolling up and down at first above the bluffs, then above the Missis- 
sippi, going and returning in wide circles, but all this time drawing surreptitiously 
toward the willows on the other side of the river. It has now become dusk and the 
descent cannot be seen from this shore, but the moment can be known by a sudden 
