Latest / NaturallyScott / E83 Naturally Scott Adventures – Purple Martins: A Million Birds on Bomb Island 🐦🌅

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E83 Naturally Scott Adventures – Purple Martins: A Million Birds on Bomb Island 🐦🌅 · NaturallyScott

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Naturally Scott.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Scott Harris, and today is a Naturally Scott Adventures, which means no human guests, but we're going to be focusing on some fun that I had recently, and I hope that you guys enjoy it.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I sure appreciate you being here.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: I love being the host.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: And let's get right into the critters we're going to be talking about.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: We are talking about the largest swallows in America.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to be our focus today.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: What are those?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Those are purple martins.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, purple martins are one of the eight swallows that we have here in America.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: We've also got barn swallows, tree swallows, cliff swallows, bank swallows, northern rough wing swallows, violet green swallows, and cave swallows.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: But ours are the biggest.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, a number of people think chimney swifts are swallows, but they're not.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're swifts.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: When I say they're the biggest of the swallows, how big?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: About eight inches in length, 15 inch wingspan, and weighing two ounces.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've been doing this for a while, and I'm still amazed at how little birds weigh, but that's the way it goes.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we're talking about purple martens, and we're going to be talking about a million purple martens in one location.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: But let's have some fun natural history stuff first.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Starting with the fact that they're not really purple.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're kind of an iridescent blue black, if you will.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: But when the light hits them just right, they can appear to be green, blue, or most often purple.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: You see the same thing with a hummingbird's neck, depending on the angle that it's facing.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that'll be the color that it shows, especially among the males.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a cool thing with these swallows.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh purple martens are aerial insectivores, and that means they eat on the go.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: They catch their insects in midair.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: What do they catch?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Beetles, flies, moths, dragonflies, wasps.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're up at about 150, 250 feet, and they're just grabbing whatever's there, and they'll do that all day long.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is how they make their living, that is how they eat.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough, um, a lot of people think that having purple martens in their yard or on their property is a great thing for mosquitoes, but it's really not.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Mosquitoes don't go as high as purple martens, and so they're living in two different strata.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: The mosquitoes are safe from purple martens.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, from a lot of other things, they're not, but they're safe from purple martens.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um now, purple martens also drink on the fly.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: You'll see them skimming over a lake or a pond, which is kind of a cool thing to see, as a matter of fact.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we enjoy that when we get an opportunity.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Purple martens, especially in the eastern United States, are really friends of people.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk about how friendly we are with them and how important we are to purple martens, and we are as much as we are to almost any other bird species in the world.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: The relationship between purple martens and human beings go back to Native Americans here in America.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Native Americans used to hang gourds to attract purple martens.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because they ate a lot of the insects.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good thing, even though it's not mosquitoes.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Man, if you can get rid of some flies and some beetles and uh keep them out of your plants and whatnot, that's probably a really good thing.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: When Europeans came here, they picked up that habit and so they started hanging gourds as well.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, purple martens are colonial nesters.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: They like to nest in groups.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's a safety factor in there which they want to take advantage of.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in the eastern half of the United States, which is where most of the purple martens in the world live, you will notice a lot of purple marten houses or apartments or condos or gourds hanging.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you see these white gourds in front yards, sometimes there's four or six.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've been to places where there are hundreds, and those are hanging.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where the purple martens are nesting.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's where they're gathering and nesting, which is really a cool thing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is thought that there might not be any uh natural nesting purple martens on the eastern seaboard.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: There haven't been any seen for a long time.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a couple of reasons for that.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh number one is the imported European starlings.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: European starlings are vicious birds, and they love to attack purple martens and purple marten nests.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: They'll either eat the eggs or kill the young, they'll kill the adults.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So when you have these purple marten apartments or purple marten gourds, they're made out of a material, a plastic quite often, um, that the starlings can't break through.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the gourds are great for the starlings.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: They get inside these gourds and they're protected from the European starlings.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think I said great for the starlings.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're terrible for the starlings, they're great for the martens.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is why you see these things hanging all over.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And people love them.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're beautiful birds, they're great to have in the front yard.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: The gourds are kind of cool.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're supposed to take them down every year and clean them.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um but once you start getting purple martens, you generally do.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: They have tremendous nest fidelity.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: If they come in and they nest and it's successful and they hatch and they have their fledglings, they want to come back next year.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really kind of a neat thing.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, today, we're talking about a lot of stuff, a lot of natural history things, of course, but let's talk about Bomb Island, because that's the significant thing.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's the big spectacle.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Lake Murray is a lake in South Carolina.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's about an hour from my home.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I live on Lake Greenwood, looking out at the lake now as we talk.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful day.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Osprey had a Cooper's hawk in the backyard.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: We have a creek in the backyard.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: We had a Cooper's hawk out there this morning.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: My son spotted, got a bunch of pictures of it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was that was an awful lot of fun.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: But Lake Murray's about an hour away.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in the middle of Lake Murray, there's a thing called Bomb Island.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's 12 acres, it's nondescript, um, but it is incredibly important.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there's not one fascinating story about it, but there's two, which is just amazing.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there's dozens of lakes in Lake Murray, but this is the lake, Bomb Island.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to talk about both stories.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to start in World War II.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: In World War II, once it started when Pearl Harbor was bombed, we opened up the Columbia Army Air Base in Columbia, South Carolina.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And James Doolittle um was running that.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you you may know him because uh Doolittle was famous for the Doolittle Raiders.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're the ones that did the 1942 bombing run over Tokyo, so that was pretty significant.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what they did in the early days of World War II is they used Bomb Island as a primary target range.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So they would get the big B-52s, they'd get the big bombers out there, and they'd fly over Balm Island, see if they couldn't hit the target.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it wasn't live ammunition, smoke and fragments and different things, um, but nonetheless, they were dropping a lot of things on the island.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, a few of the planes crashed into the lake.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the last one was only pulled out in 2005.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: It had been there uh from the early 1940s uh until 60 years later in 2005.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And when you visit the island, which you can do when the Martins aren't there, there are still people that find fragments of those bombs out there.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've not done that yet, but it sure seems like a lot of fun.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: I may run my pontoon boat over there and give that a shot.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: But thousands of missions were flown coming out of Columbia and um over Bomb Island.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how it's got its name.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: After we stopped doing that, after World War II, it just went back to being a nondescript island, one of dozens, um, in the middle of Lake Murray.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly, for reasons that ornithologists and scientists can't agree on, in the mid-1980s, purple martens started to come and roost there.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows why.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows what the attraction was to Lake Murray specifically, um, and even more specifically, uh, right down to this island, Baum Island, or Doolittle Island, as it used to be known.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's the lower Piedmont region of South Carolina.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a nice convenient stopping and gathering place uh for the Purple Martins once they have finished uh their breeding.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: The lake itself, 41 miles by 14 miles, 50,000 acres, 200 feet deep at the deepest, and as I mentioned, dozens of islands.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: This island might be a little bit different than the others, in that it appears that it is the only island on the lake that on in all 360 degrees is at least a mile from the mainland, which means maybe some of the predators that would come out looking for these martins, raccoons and whatnot, uh, might not want to make that trip.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it is possible that that is the attraction, but it's not a definitive answer.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um uh we don't really know yet.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that we'll ever know.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: But starting in the mid-1980s, the purple martin started to gather there.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a gathering spot post-breeding, post-fledging, and before they head south for migration.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And south means predominantly Brazil, but scattered places throughout South America.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And while there are other places where the purple martens gather nowhere near the numbers that happen here on Balm Island, at its peak, it can be a million birds.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: One million birds gathered on a 12-acre island.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's remarkable.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: This this roost is just amazing.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Don't know why exactly this island, but conjecture on why they gather in these large groups is there is safety in numbers.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a staging area for feeding.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: So they come and they sleep here at night and they take off in the morning and spread out and go gather up food until they feel it's time to head down to South America.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they don't all leave at once, but they do leave in waves.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: There are groups of them to lead, to, to leave at the same time.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And again, a million birds.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I've been out there a handful of times, and it's funny, I don't know how to count to a million.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I rely on the captains and their experience.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I hope they're telling the truth, not just make it up numbers.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: But at the height of um it's July and early August are when the birds really gather there.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had captains tell me that we've had up to uh a half million on uh on a given night.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was just out there a couple weeks ago, and um, there were fewer than 50,000.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth is, I don't know that I could tell a difference between a half million and a million.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the sky is full at what they say is a half million.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: There are an awful lot of purple martens out there.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the way to get out there, you can take your own boat.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can just trailer my pontoon boat or other locals can, or you can come out and there are a number of pontoon boats that for a small fee, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 bucks.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to remember.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can load up on a beautiful pontoon boat with the captain.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've done that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, generally there are about six other people that load up with you.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can I've I've filled the boat before with just friends and family, or I've gone out on my own and just met who's out there.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes everything from the mildly curious people that live in the area looking to do something a little different to serious birders that are coming out because they want to see one of the great spectacles of nature.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: On the recent trip that I was on, there were six of us.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: So there was myself and another gentleman in the front, and the two of us were the, I would say, the more serious uh birders.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: He had come up from Florida just for this.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: He had driven up to Florida, came and did this two nights in a row and then turned around and went back.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of cool to meet him and spend some time.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: The other four people, they were local, just something they wanted to do.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like somebody who lives in Brooklyn, wants to go see the Empire State Building.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a it's a fun thing.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: You get in the pontoon boat, and they come from a number of different harbors.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Again, the lake is, you know, 41 miles uh top to bottom, so there's there's a lot of different little marinas in there.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so the pontoon boats come out.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um the captain that we went out with uh took us to a couple of quiet coves on our way out to the island, so we got to see these coves.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the coves don't have any homes in them.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the areas have homes.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: They're beautiful, they're lakefront, they're people that are doing very well, and they've built some great homes.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: But some of them are, I think, owned by um some of the power companies.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no homes, there's no buildings.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you get these white-tailed deer, you get great blue heron, you get Osprey, you get bald eagles.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a neat thing to see.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: As you start to get close to Bomb Island, it gets a little wild.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: You see boats coming from all different directions.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: All the different marinas are sending out boats, either personal boats or boats that you charter, like I've done.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they're gathering from these different directions.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because they're circling around the other islands and coming to this one island and they gather up.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you can you can kind of manage what kind of activity you want.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to see nobody else come out early on a weekday morning, now that's when the birds are taking off, and it's a great thing to see.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Most people come in the evening because it's more convenient.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: The birds start to come in roughly a half hour or so before sunset, and in and and uh you get to see all of that activity.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you go in the middle of the week, there's obviously fewer people.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you go out at the height, kind of the mid-July to early August time frame, you go out on a weekend, it's a party.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: There can be up to 250 boats out there.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's music playing, there's people swimming and drinking and tubing and having a good time.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're going out there for quiet reflection, a Saturday night at the end of July is not the answer.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there for both.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're different experiences, but they're an awful lot of fun.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: But again, you want to go out and have the least amount of people?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Go out midweek, go out for the morning, um, and you can have a blast.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh it's kind of a kick in the butt to do that.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now, on this last trip that I did, I went out with uh Captain Zach Steinhauser.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'd met Zach a while ago.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Zach has a podcast here with us on uh Naturally Scott.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: He and I were both keynote speakers at uh Birding Festival a while back.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: We had a chance to meet.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Zach does a lot of things.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: He captains pontoon boat.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: He takes people on tours for different things around South Carolina, freshwater and saltwater.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And a few years ago, he did a documentary called Purple Haze.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was all about Purple Martins.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta admit it's a great name for a documentary, Purple Haze.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: But he talks about what's going on on the East Coast.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: He talks a lot about Balm Island.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: He also goes out to the West Coast and tries to find natural cavities.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll leave it to you uh to watch that to find out if he does.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Zach's a good guy.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: He's filled with information.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can see his uh video, Purple Haze now, he's uploaded on YouTube.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's free for everybody.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: So give it a watch if you want.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of cool.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when the birds come back at night, they come back singly.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they get up in the morning and they disperse all over to go out and try to eat and gather up as much food as they can.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So they're going in a variety of directions.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: When they come back, they're doing the same thing.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're coming in from all 360 degrees, but they're not flying in big flocks.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're flying singly.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they circle around for a while and they're checking things out, making sure they're happy about what's going on.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you will see flocks of birds out there, but those are common grackles and brown-headed cowbirds.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you can differentiate them um from the purple martens if for no other reason, because they're collected up in flocks.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: But there are some that spend their night on the island.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you watch these circle around, and then all of a sudden, uh at a signal that I have no idea what it is, I'm not sure if anybody does, they all decide it's time to descend onto the island.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, excuse me, we're done now.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go down, let's crash, let's get a good night's sleep.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good time to do that.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and then they just slowly start filling the trees.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because it's getting dark now when they're doing that, so you're seeing more silhouettes, and then pretty soon you're not really seeing anything at all.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the island itself has shrubs and grasses, short-leaf pines, some mixed hardwoods.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Again, nothing unique about it compared to the other islands.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I will tell you that when you get a half million birds out there and you've got 12 acres of island, you've got roughly one square foot per bird.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a little bit crowded.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's but you don't really get to see that um because it does get dark quickly as the birds are descending.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you're watching them mostly fly, you're watching them drop, you watch the early ones get into the trees and bushes, and then you start to lose it.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is their gathering place, and they'll do this, they'll stay for a couple of three weeks, and they get up in groups, and as I mentioned, then they leave down for Brazil.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we've learned that's really cool is that the young purple martins know how to get there on their own.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they don't need mom and dad to teach them how to get, we're gonna say, in Brazil, um, but it's other parts of South America as well.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they're making these trips that are thousands of miles.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, you're going from South Carolina to Brazil.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's a long trip for a two-ounce bird.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but they're packing on weight, hoping to double their weight with all the insects that they can eat, and off they go.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm working on a book, I've mentioned it before on the show called American Sfarri's.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the book is basically, not basically, it's exactly 25 places you can go in the country that if you go at the exact right time and you go to the exact location that I identify, you're virtually guaranteed um to see the animal that I recommend.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: So elephant seals in Sans Semine, California, Osprey at Sebastian Inlet in Florida, black bears at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of those 25, the purple martens, because a chance to see a million birds, the same species at one time in a tiny location, a location that's easy to get to.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're out on a lake, it's a beautiful way to spend an evening anyway.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a great thing.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: But that'll be in the book, American Safaris.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you get a chance to see that.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is only in the fall migration, by the way.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: We don't get them in the spring migration.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's because the breeding is critical.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: They have no time for gathering.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: They are moving.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: They've packed up whatever energy they can in South America, and they're heading north and they're going off and they're looking for their gourds, their familiar places to go, because they want to make their babies, they want to do it safely and quickly.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then they come to the island.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say they relax because small birds like that never get to relax, but they don't have the pressure of raise raising birds and defending their bird, their babies from others.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they can pack it on, and um, that's why we get them only in the fall and not in the spring.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Are there other places you can go in the country and see large collections?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: There are.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anywhere near Balm Island?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if you go to Travis Audubon in Texas, contact Travis Audubon.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: They have Purple Martin parties.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: They gather up in shopping centers.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: They have purple martins in town and they gather up in shopping centers.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: The shopping centers change based on where the Martins are, but nonetheless, they have these parties.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have not done that yet, but I'm telling you, I'm going to get to Travis during Purple Martin season because I just think that's something you gotta see.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's just too cool not to.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Nashville, Tennessee, the Cumberland River, they've got a nice collection of um Purple Martins.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can look that up and head over there.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Old Man's Harbor Bridge in North Carolina.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you like bridges, and I do, that's a great place to see them.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: A million Purple Martins, remarkably easily accessible.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: You get a little boat ride, you get to see a beautiful lake, you can bring a bottle of wine, bring a little something to snack on.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a terrific way to go.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm throwing my email up here, Scott at naturally scott.com.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got comments on this show, suggestions for future shows, please share them with me because I'd love to have them.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you're watching us on YouTube, do me a favor and hit subscribe.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: No cost or time to you, but it does get this pushed out to other people.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the more people that see it, the better off we are.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just more people learning about conservation and nature is a cool thing.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got comments or if you like it, go ahead and do that, man.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Drop a comment, hit like.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to see that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to say thank you for watching us.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is an exciting thing for us.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: I love doing these adventures.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: I love going on adventures.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've got one coming up next week.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going out to California, and I'm going to be studying uh humpback whales, California Sea Otters, and California Sea Lions for another book on doing.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's actually for the American Safaris book.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So those will be three of the ones in American Safaris.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So those will also be Naturally Scott Adventures coming up here in a little bit.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um after I say thank you and thank you, thank you, thank you for watching and listening, I encourage you to get outside.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Backyard, front yard, local park, travel internationally, head to South Carolina in the middle of the summer.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And when you do get outside, make sure that you stay safe and stay curious.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Scott Harris.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: This has been Naturally Scott.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for watching.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you learned a little something.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you're intrigued enough to go look at Purple Martins, and I hope to see you here again next week.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Take care now.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a Naturally Scott Adventures podcast with Scott Harris.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott Adventures is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, and edited by Frank Sierra.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at Naturally Scott Harris.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott Adventures thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.