Towheeblog

My life-long friend, Mike Lund, sent me this picture from North Carolina…a village of Purple Martins, North America’s largest swallow.  They are not often cruising above the lawn behind a lawn mower like Barn Swallows like to do.  These bigger aerial hunters often feed over 150 feet in the air.  A single adult martin can catch up to 2000 mosquitoes in a single day, if the supply if sufficient.  Here in the west they are generally found near water as there just aren’t enough mossies and other flying insects out in the dry lands.  Our martins do not appear in areas where they would have to compete with Black Terns and Franklin’s Gulls.