BY THE WAYSIDE 
27 
Purple Martins nested in buildings or 
dwellings where a board happened to be 
broken off under the eaves; but now 
they only nest in bird houses, as the 
sparrows occupy the old nesting places. 
And, of course, the young birds nest 
again in houses similar to those where 
they were raised," so they do not go 
back to their older types of haunts. 
This is a cheerful report for the in¬ 
crease of martins about Milwaukee, but 
I note in Kumlien and Hollister's report 
for the state “Birds of Wisconsin, 
19o3," that they are not nearly so com¬ 
mon as twenty to thirty years ago, due 
to the nest-stealing of English sparrows. 
This report states that many young die 
in the nest each year for some reason 
unknown, which has been dwelt upon at 
length in the report of the state orni¬ 
thologist for Massachusetts. The latter 
considers that cold rainy turns in the 
spring weather cause the decrease of 
swallows, like the martins, more than 
any other one cause, for a dearth of 
insect life for more than a day or two 
in such weather means sure death to- 
the surviving migrants that arrive about 
the first of April. 
In the photograph Mr. Wahl sent me 
lie shows a 26-room house which had 
17 pairs this season, each successfully 
rearing a brood of young. He says 
“they return every year, the advance 
guard being generally one bird, followed 
within a few days by more. All the 
available birds were accommodated with 
nesting places this year, as I saw none 
flying about unable to find one, there 
bring 9 unoccupied rooms in my bird 
house. One year I had blue birds, tree 
swallows; purple martins, and house 
wrens in separate houses.” Dr. Der- 
nehl (in the 1900 Bulletin of the Wis¬ 
consin Natural History Society, p. 190) 
called attention to the martins as driv¬ 
ing out barn and tree swallows but tol¬ 
erant of sparrows, robins, wrens, ori¬ 
oles, etc., where the birds had different 
habits. Now, much to my surprise, I 
• saw martins, sparrows, and tree swal¬ 
lows living together in the eaves of the 
Madison Observatory last year. These 
notes on tolerance and intolerance evi¬ 
dently conflict, so that I would suggest 
it is worth the while of those so situated 
to see why the martins tolerate the 
sparrow and the tree swallow in one 
place and not in another. Finally, the 
Audubon Leaflet on the Martin claims 
the sparrow a great enemy of the mar¬ 
t’ll, but that the martin’s greatest 
decimation comes through the awful 
slaughter of these birds in the Caro- 
linas. It makes the appeal that the 
birds shouM be cared for, if for no 
other reason, because they are mosquito 
destroyers. The malarial mosquito oc¬ 
curs in our state; and the presence of 
martins about the house, will insure 
greater difficulty for the malarial mos¬ 
quito to run the gauntlet to get into our 
houses in their search for human blood. 
