Arnie Hoersten will talk about purple martins at noon Tuesday in the dean's heritage room in McIntosh Center. He will describe the acrobatic bird at a meeting of the Kiwanis Club, but all interested in the boisterous and social bird are welcome to attend. Arnie is the ONU senior technology manager for the office of information technology.
Here are a few fun facts about purple martins:
1. Remember seeing plastic gourds in backyards to provide housing for the birds? Centuries ago, Native Americans were hanging real hollowed-out gourds to attract them.
2. The purple martin is the largest swallow in North America.
3. Many believe the bird eats 2,000 mosquitoes a day. Wrong. They fly too high to catch the pesky mosquitoes.
4. Purple martins aren't purple, but have dark iridescent plumage that can look different depending on the light.
5. The oldest known purple martin lived for nearly 14 years.
6. Purple martins migrate way down into South America, but return to the same house.
To learn more about attracting and keeping the popular bird, hear Arnie at noonTuesday.
(On a personal note, a kind person gave me a three-story purple martin house that he constructed himself. It was put high on a pole because they don't like to be too close to people. I was told not to expect martins the first year. If you do, they are probably the one-year-olds who haven't found a house yet. To my amazement, all the rooms were filled the first year, providing a wonderful experience all summer watching the martins swoop and dart in the sky.)
