Purple Martin at the nest box
Progne subis
Purple Martin · Staten Island · 5 July 2026
A Purple Martin calling from the threshold of a proper martin house on Staten Island, crescent-shaped entrance holes and all, with a neighbour visible in the next compartment. Martins are colonial nesters of open country near water, and in the East they live almost entirely in houses like this one.
They are famously site-faithful: the same colony, and often the same individual birds, return to a house year after year, which is why active martin housing tends to accumulate a following of dedicated landlords who track return dates each spring. The whole eastern population winters in the Amazon basin.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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