Feathered Joy

My grandfather's purple martin box.

I've been waiting expectantly since the beginning of the month.  For the last two years, the purple martins who live in our backyard box during the spring and summer have returned from their Brazilian winter during the first week of February.

The box sways in the wind atop its poll, hollow and forlorn, all fall and winter.  The occasional sparrow lights on its perches or squats in one of the dozen apartments, but I pull out their nests if they start to build.  These apartments are exclusively for the purple martins.

My grandfather tenanted large populations of martins.  He had two boxes, each holding over 100 apartments, and most were filled with singles or nesting pairs.  Every year many dozens of birds were born in his boxes, fledged and migrated to Brazil for the fall and winter, then returned to breed and raise their own young in those same boxes.  Papaw would sit in a cane-backed chair under the carport with a .22 rifle, ready to eliminate any starlings that tried to drag out and eat martin eggs or chicks.  His dog retrieved the fallen predators and placed them in a pile by Papaw's chair.  Sometimes, he let me and my cousins retrieve them, which thrilled us.

Rat snakes ate the martins and their eggs, too.  You'd look out the front window and see the long, black body hanging out of the hole while it gorged itself.  Papaw would ascend the ladder within reach of the snake, grab it by its tail end, and whip it out of the hole, forcing it to drop whatever bird it was holding.  In one swift move, holding the pole with one hand and the snake with the other, he would swing the snake in one wide loop to pop it like a bull-whip, sending its head flying over the black walnut trees and out onto the road.  My cousins and I marveled as he slit open the snake with his pocket knife to see how many of his beloved birds had been lost to the predator.

So, I come by my love of purple martins naturally.  I sit in the backyard swing to watch them every day, and I feel an almost inexpressible joy in doing so.  I can hear their sharp, crackling cries from high above me, even above the din of the freeway.  I can pick them out of the clear blue sky even when they are at their highest in the afternoons, surfing the circling wind currents to catch dragonflies.  They are master aerialists, darting and diving and free falling high or low over the lake, their forked tails splayed and turning as a keel.  They zoom over the water, touching their bellies to the surface so as to cool their chicks with wet feathers.  They eat mounds of mosquitos, dragonflies and dayflies.  They settle on the box perches at dusk, chortling and chirping into the setting sun before darting into their apartments for the night.

I yearn for them every year at this time.  And they always seem to come back to their home here right when I need them.  Two years ago, the first one returned the morning after I quit my job.  I woke up after a fitful night and there he was, black and shining in the morning sun.  I took it as a good sign.  Last year, the first bird returned as my friend was visiting us during a particularly trying time for her.  I took that as a good sign, too.

This year, they were almost two weeks late.  But, the first birds returned a few days ago and have already begun scouting out which apartments they prefer.  I begin my second round of chemotherapy this coming week and won't have much energy for anything but sitting in the backyard swing.

Again, it seems, the purple martins have returned to their part-time home at exactly the right time.