In the Woods: The Purple Martin Show

Ai Generated Podcast edited for spelling, grammar, and syntax accuracy by Carrie Cantrell.

Introduction to In the Woods Podcast

Lauren Grand: From the Oregon State University's Extension Service, you are listening to In the Woods with the Forestry and Natural Resources Program. This podcast brings the forest to listeners by sharing the stories and voices of forest scientists, land managers, and enthusiastic members of the public. Each episode, we will bring you research and science-based information that aims to offer some insight into what we know and are still learning about forest science and management.

Stick around to discover a new topic related to forests on each episode.

Thank you for joining us on another episode of In the Woods.

Meet Your Host and Today's Topic

Lauren Grand: I'm Lauren Grand, Oregon State University Extension Forester and Associate Professor of Practice, and I'll be your host for today's episode.

I'm really excited to get to talk to one of my colleagues today who is an absolute delight when she talks about Purple Martins, and that's what today's episode is all about. They make her really excited, and I know you'll see that in the episode. Excitement come through during our conversation. We hope that at the end of this podcast that you'll get to know a little bit more about this special bird.

And then also if there's any things that people can do to help protect them. So, before we get started on that, I'd like to introduce you to our guest today.

Introducing Lorelle Sherman

Lauren Grand: Joining us is Lorelle Sherman. Welcome to the podcast, Lorelle.

Lorelle Sherman: Thanks, Lauren. It's great to be here.

Lauren Grand: As I mentioned earlier, Lorelle is a colleague of mine.

She works at OSU Extension with me, and I've had the pleasure of being able to work with her on a couple projects and she is just so smart and so resourceful in knowing lots of things about wildlife and how to take care of them. So, I'm really excited that she's here with us today. Lorelle, can you share a little bit with us about how you got into wildlife biology and forestry and, what interested you in getting into this role?

Lorelle's Journey into Wildlife Biology

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, absolutely. I got my first pair of binoculars when I was a teeny tiny girl, my Opa, my grandfather gifted me a pair of binoculars, and so I would just go, there was a little city park next to where I grew up and I would go sit under the trees and just watch the tree canopy all day. And so, I just shockingly got really excited about birds.

And then realized that there was an entire college program for wildlife biology, where I could specialize in avian science. So, I went and got my Bachelor of Science at the university of Vermont and wildlife biology and just became completely obsessed with studying birds.

Lauren Grand: Oh, that seems to be a common theme with people who like birds.

But I love bird people, so I'm glad that they're enthusiastic about it. Okay, great.

All About the Purple Martin

Lauren Grand: Now that we know that we're talking about birds today, can you tell us a little bit more about what bird we're going to be talking about and what they look like and things that this bird likes to do?

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, so, I started studying the Purple Martin, which is a swallow species. It's the largest swallow in North America. It's this gorgeous, iridescent blue purple bird when the sun hits its feathers. It's just absolutely stunning, and the song that it makes sounds like Star Wars lasers, so it's really just a fun bird to be around.

But yeah, so I actually really wanted to work with Dr. Joan Hagar, and she happened to be studying Purple Martins, and so that's how I got into this field. Specific species of bird they're found in the Pacific Northwest. The Western Purple Martin is the subspecies that we have here in Oregon. They're also in Washington, Northern California, and British Columbia in.

Oregon, in Western Oregon, they live west of the Cascade Crest under 4, 000 feet and pretty much all over, they're scattered all over Western Oregon, which makes them challenging to study, but also fun because you get to go all over. To the coast, up into the mountains I went out on boats to study them.

Yeah. So, what else do you want to know about the Purple Martin?

Lauren Grand: I've got lots of questions for you today, but it sounds like maybe I got into the wrong graduate project having not been able to travel all over the West in boats and hikes and that sounds really fun.

Lorelle Sherman: It was exhausting, but fun.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, right.

And, you know, I love this thought I just picture in my head this gorgeous bird and then Star Wars and lightsabers all over. I don't know.

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah.

Purple Martin Habitats and Behaviors

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, the cool thing about the Purple Martin is a lot of birds that people study is really hard to see. And you, kind of don't see them much and you just hear them behind the tree canopy.

But the Purple Martin is boisterous and territorial. So, it comes out and it will show itself to you. And so, I got to see these birds up close and personal and sometimes even dive bombing me. So, it's a fun species to study.

Lauren Grand: Okay, cool. It sounds like it's good for beginners too because it's you don't have to work too hard.

So, you mentioned that it's a bird that a lot of people can see. So, you don't have to just be somebody who lives in the forest or, frequents the forest to see this bird can, are they in where can you find them?

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, so they live in these three different ecotypes. The first is these big inland open water, freshwater lakes like Fern Ridge Reservoir, Cottage Grove Lake, and Darina Lake are three lakes with big, Pretty large populations of Purple Martins.

They're migratory birds. So, they're here in Western Oregon from about late April, May through October. And so, you could go to Fern Ridge Reservoir, for example, and just hike around the lake and just listen for them. There are artificial nest boxes, these wooden boxes up on poles that they nest in, and some of them are right off of the trail.

So, you can actually stand right below and just listen to the cacophony of bird and chaos. And then the second ecotype is coastal, and they nest in these old rotting pilings, which is pretty cool. So. I should mention that they're cavity nesters, and that means that they nest inside of cavities in snags, or like I mentioned, the pilings, but they don't make the cavities themselves.

They actually rely on woodpeckers to come in and excavate a cavity. And then once the woodpeckers leave the Purple Martins will move in and nest in the cavity. So, you could go to Reedsport, for example, and go to the docks. Coos Bay has a pretty large population in the pilings. Yeah, the upland forest birds are a little harder to get to cause they're often behind locked gates and down unimproved logging roads.

So, you could, hit up the coastal or the freshwater populations.

Lauren Grand: Okay. Yeah. Sounds like you need to be maybe somebody who frequents the forest to be able to brave those upland family groups or populations. Okay.

Conservation Efforts and Challenges

Lauren Grand: So, tell me more about why, why were you and your mentor so interested in studying This bird? Are they threatened? Are their populations decreasing? Is there something that we need to be concerned about for this species?

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, definitely. So, they're an insectivorous bird. They exclusively eat insects and most birds that are insectivorous are declining because insect populations are declining.

In Oregon and Washington, we have a subspecies here called the Western Purple Martin, and it's listed as a sensitive status species, meaning that it's vulnerable. And could be listed at some point, unless we, take some action to conserve its population.

And I believe it's listed as threatened in British Columbia. We didn't know much about their populations and how to conserve them. That's another reason why they were listed, but yeah, I don't remember the exact year, but a couple of decades ago, their populations plummeted, and they almost went extinct on the West Coast.

So, there was a really big push to do some research on just how to save the populations. They're doing a lot better now.

Lauren Grand: All right. So back then, Cool. We really didn't know a lot about this bird until they noticed that the populations were declining so much and that's when research took an uptick.

Lorelle Sherman: Yes, exactly. And there were several working groups that form during that time. The Western Purple Martin working group, for example pretty much got it started around then trying to figure out how to save the species. This, especially the subspecies in the Pacific Northwest, because people love these birds.

I mean, they're really beautiful and loud and they're on the East Coast. The eastern subspecies has been around humans for. Just hundreds of years. So, people really don't want this bird to disappear. So yeah, there was a big push for research when that happened.

Research Findings and Recommendations

Lauren Grand: Okay, so tell us a little bit more about what was found in this research, it sounds like things are doing a little bit better because they're not extinct.

what was discovered in some of this research for things that we could make some differences to help this bird out?

Lorelle Sherman: so, I studied, I started out by studying their habitat and just trying to figure out how many are there. Where are they and what types of habitats are they nesting in?

And it was kind of fun to be on a project where you get to study that really basic stuff. But. So, they're in the upland forest habitat in these woodland areas, they're nesting in post disturbance forest also known as early seral, so they need these big open spaces before the canopy closes in to take their feeding flights. They're really not good at walking, they have tiny, short legs because they're morphologically built for flying to capture insects while on the wing. And so, they really need a snag with nest cavities in it in a big open area.

And we used to have a lot of that because of wildfire and even maybe big ice storms or wind blowdown. But after fire suppression and the Northwest Forest Plan, there was really a reduction of that open early sterile habitat. But so yeah, that's really what they need is just a big open area, a snag in the center of it and insect populations.

Lauren Grand: Okay, so it sounds kind of similar to bats, right? They need a clear place to fly around to pick up bugs and dead standing tree to build a nest in,

Lorelle Sherman: Yes, exactly. The one, yeah, I will add though that they, so often people leave snags when they're harvesting or yeah, when they're harvesting, they'll leave a snag on the edge of the stand so that it's right up against the mature forest. Um, One thing that we found in my research is that they really need that snag to be out in the open in the middle of the stand. I think it was something an average of like 100 meters. The nest snags that I found that were occupied and successful or something like 100 meters from closed canopy forest.

So, if folks are. Harvesting and need and are wanting to create Purple Martin habitat, you really can't leave that snag right up against the closed canopy forest. You got to put it right out in the middle. They love it right in the middle.

Lauren Grand: They want to be the star of the show at some point. Yeah. With all those colors and loud noises.

Okay. So, they like to be out in the middle. Is there a minimum snag diameter that they prefer? Or do they require a certain size of dead standing tree?

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah. So, we actually did look at the snag diameter. And the longstanding belief was that they needed these big legacy snags that were just massive to nest in because they'd have multiple cavities in them, and they would house multiple pairs of Purple Martins. So, all these Purple Martins could gang up on predators and protect their nestlings. However, when I did my surveys of snag habitat, I found that they were nesting in really tiny puny snags. I don't have a number off the top of my head, but I'm thinking like 20 inches in diameter.

Really, I think the limitation is the cavity within the tree bowl has to be large enough to house four to six nestlings. This is a big bird. This is a big swallow, and they have four to six nestlings, often six. And so, they really cannot fit their nestlings into small of a snag and, but one reason why I think they were nesting in these small snags is because that's really all that's out there.

That's what's being left now, since our rotation, our harvest rotation is a lot shorter than it used to be. So, the tree when we're cutting trees down, there's smaller DBH, and so there's smaller snags left. I can't prove this, but I think Purple Martins would ideally love to be in those big old legacy snags.

There's just not a lot of them out there now.

Lauren Grand: So, okay. So, it sounds like they're still good at taking advantage of what's there. And I find it interesting that you said puny at 20 inches because I thought that was, you know, the way we talk about snags, you know, that sort of seems now on the larger side, right?

But yeah, it makes sense that historically there used to be these giant snags on the landscape that we don't see as often anymore of 40 plus inch trees. So big snags, leaving big snags is a good thing. And sort of the way you've been talking about the Purple Martin is that they've somewhat succeeded in these groups of pairs and nestlings in these large snags.

Can you talk a little bit more about that? You described them all being together and having all these songs all together and then nesting together. Is that a common behavior or is that a behavior they rely on? Do you know?

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah. they're called colonial nesters, and I think there's a few reasons why that's beneficial, but the major one that is easy to see when you out there are that they really do a good job of ganging up and together and fighting off snakes, rats, owls, all, anything that flies by and they will go after it.

And they're very agile, so they're very good at fending off predators. The other thing that I notice is \ the second-year birds, which we would call immature birds, they actually help adults raise their young. So, it's almost like a group effort where they're learning how to be successful parents before they actually have to do it.

Lauren Grand: Oh, it'd be nice if we did that, too.

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of fun to watch that the second your birds fumble around.

Lauren Grand: That's cute. Okay, so that's great. So, that's fun to think about, too, that they have those communal living spaces. Okay. So, we started to allude to this a little bit when you talked about, if you're harvesting to leave large snags or snags in general, but the large seems like the larger, the better in the middle of what would be, a clear cut since it needs to be, the most successful 300 meters from closed canopy.

Supporting Purple Martin Populations

Lauren Grand: Are there any other things that you would suggest for supporting Purple Martin populations in Oregon?

Lorelle Sherman: Absolutely. One major issue that we're running into now is that If you girdle a tree or create a snag at the time of harvest, it takes several years for fungi, wood decay fungi to get in there, soften up the wood, so that a woodpecker can come in, create a cavity, leave, and then a Purple Martin come in.

And by that time our Doug for and whatever we're planting grows really fast. So, by that time, the canopy is already starting to close in. So, it really is the period of time that we have early sterile habitat is truncated. And so, one suggestion that we have is to go in. To a unit before you harvest, I don't know, maybe a few years and girdle your trees and allow them to start that decay process ahead of time.

So that when you harvest the unit, you've already got a functional snag. And the, all those snag nesting species can get the most out of it before the conifer trees close in again.

Lauren Grand: That's actually a really cool suggestion because, I've been thinking and talking with colleagues a lot about even thinning practices, you know, we usually thin from below to keep the larger, healthier trees, at least in Douglas fir dominant forests.

And we've been talking about that We're not thinking about what future snags we need. And so that's kind of a really cool concept. You can go out and identify The best snag trees almost and be intentional about that To make sure that they're staying on the landscape even through this large-scale harvest operation.

So that's really cool. And because I'm a proponent for management plans, I feel like that's a perfect thing to put in your management plan because you have to think about it before the next step. So

Lorelle Sherman: yeah, there you go.

Lauren Grand: Another way for me to plug a management plan is always a good day. Cool. Are there anything else that you might suggest?

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, I will say that if you're not able to do that what we did in a unit was on a recently girdled tree. Attach our wooden nest boxes so that they can come and have it that stand. Wow. The snag is, getting ready for use and they're already there and then they'll move into natural cavities whenever they're available.

And we've shown this to happen. So, the purple martins are really good at moving between the house, artificial housing and natural snag cavities. There are tons of bird box. Designs online. You need to do one that's specific for the Purple Martin, and there are plans online. They're pretty easy to make.

The reason why you need one specific for the Purple Martin is because they need, the entrance has to be a half-moon shape. If it's a full circle, the Purple Martin body is big enough that it will also allow European starlings in, and European starlings will out compete the Purple Martin. But there's something about that half-moon entrance shape that keeps the starlings out, but the Purple Martins can squeeze their little bodies in there.

Yeah, that's that. And even if you don't own a woodland, but if you have a big meadow or prairie area, or, any kind of big open area with lots of insects, you could put. Artificial housing nest boxes up, you want to get them as high as you can for predators and just, they'll be more likely to inhabit ones that are high up.

But yeah,

Lauren Grand: cool. Okay. Those are good suggestions. We always have a lot of people asking about bird boxes and having suggestions for those. So, we'll try and include a link to the on our website in the woods podcast. com with Some nest box recommendations. So that's cool. I love the half-moon entryway feels it adds to the persona of the Purple Martin now that we've been creating here.

Lorelle Sherman: Well, people get crazy and burn the outside to make them look like, you know, wildfire burned, like camouflaged bird boxes. People get really into it.

Lauren Grand: Oh, that's great. I love that. Okay, so, it sounds like you could build or put up a bunch of these nest boxes and have pretty good number of populations in an area.

The Importance of Snags and Artificial Housing

Lauren Grand: Are there way to mimic the large snags?

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, so if you go to Fern Ridge Reservoir, they put up these big osprey poles, which are pretty much utility, old utility poles, and then there's wooden nest boxes. Drilled into them. And so that's a common way. So, you really, you're mimicking the big legacy snags because you have, this utility pole and then you have like 6 to 8 nest boxes on it.

All kind of facing different directions. And so, then you'll get 6 to 8 pairs, and they'll form a little unit, but the interesting thing about the Purple Martin is that they fly really long distances on a daily basis. And so, they're highly connected with other pairs that are, over a kilometer away.

And so, even if you know that your neighbor has Purple Martins, or if you live around an area that has them and you put your nest boxes up, if you have a pair or two there, they're still going to be interacting with the larger population around them.

Lauren Grand: That's pretty neat. Yeah, I don't have anything else to say about that.

But I think that's pretty neat. So, it sounds like the Nest boxes are really useful and work really well. You said earlier that, they can go back and forth pretty well between nest box and snag. Do you know if in those situations, is there, do they have a preference? Or do these nest boxes work just as well as snags?

Lorelle Sherman: So, I would say, That based on observation, the snags are better because they have more airflow. So, any cavity nesting bird is subject to mites and moisture and mold, and that could kill or reduce the vigor of the nestlings. And so out here. In the Pacific Northwest, we use wooden nest boxes, so they do a pretty good job, with airflow and mites aren't too bad, but there's also these plastic gourd racks you can look them up and we don't use them as much here in the Pacific Northwest, but on the East Coast, they use these plastic gourd racks and People call themselves Purple Martin landlords.

It's really interesting. They put up all these gourd racks. And I don't necessarily like them as much because, they hold a lot of moisture in there and, nestlings can suffer sometimes if there's high heat or if they have mite infestations. But yeah, I will mention on the East Coast the subspecies out there, there's over 10 million birds on the East Coast.

The eastern subspecies and our western subspecies, we have less than 5000 pairs is what we're assuming. So, the eastern population is expanding and that's because they're nesting in these artificial housing units in people's backyards. So, they're essentially expanding as people move them westward by putting up these housing units.

They're completely reliant on artificial housing on the East Coast. And that's. due to a combination of fragmentation of habitat, loss of insect populations, and just a loss of snags from development. So, it's really cool and important that we have snag nesting species in the Pacific Northwest still because the Eastern sub-species has totally lost that behavior.

And we would like to do our best to preserve that behavior in the Pacific Northwest.

Lauren Grand: Yeah. It sounds difficult that, now this bird is totally reliant on humans and humans becoming their landlords, if you will for them to survive. Yeah. It'd be great to make sure that, they weren't as reliant on us creating housing for them, that they still had that significant, important resource for them to be able to survive with.

So, all these, yeah. So, it sounds like while these nest boxes are helpful, in a good replacement where we can really support the retention of these large snags.

Lorelle Sherman: Yeah, I see them as a tool to bolster the population while you're increasing the natural snag habitat and then removing them once the snags are suitable for nesting.

So, it's like an interim out here. On the East coast, that's literally their only option, which there's good and bad with that because it brings wildlife into folks’ backyards. It connects them with nature. So, there's a lot of good that comes with that. But I would like to just really shy away from using too many nest boxes and really focusing on that snag habitat out here.

Lauren Grand: All right, great.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Lauren Grand: Wow. I have to say, I just learned so much from that conversation. And I think it's obvious that I was really excited for your enthusiasm about it. So, thank you so much for being willing to chat with me about Purple Martins and your research. Is there anything else you want to add that you think is important for people to know or hear?

Lorelle Sherman: I think that it's, they're just, they're really, I would, Encourage everybody to get out and go look for Purple Martins. If you live around Corvallis, go to the McDonald Dunn Forest. You could go to Fern Ridge Reservoir. They're just spectacular birds and I often just sit there and watch them for hours.

And then just a side note, we've been banding them. We put little color bands on their legs when they're nestlings. So, if you are out there watching your Purple Martins And you see a band, please send me an email and let me know so I can go track it down.

Lauren Grand: Oh, okay. Awesome. We'll make sure your email address is on our website so you can get all the emails.

Yes.

Lorelle Sherman: Great.

Lauren Grand: Do you know if people post these on naturalist? Could people look up where populations might be to go? with their binoculars. I would imagine

Lorelle Sherman: so. I haven't actually looked, but I'm sure there, bird people are active on iNaturalist, but also eBird. org is the birder's version of iNaturalist.

And I would send people there. And you can do the same thing as iNaturalist, where you type in a species and get observations based on a map. So yeah, check out eBird.

Lauren Grand: Here we go learning something new every, section. Okay, great. I'm so thrilled to have learned all that, that Purple Martins are, were having a hard time, we're doing a little bit better now that we have information and know what they need and gonna continue to work hard to keep some large snags on the landscape for them.

But don't leave us yet. You have some of the information. We're going to learn a little bit more about Lorelle here coming up after the break

Lauren Grand: okay.

Lightning Round with Lorelle Sherman

Lauren Grand: So, We're back with Lorelle and we have our lightning round where I get to ask her a few questions that we ask all of our guests. But before that, I just want to make sure that if you are listening today and any questions came up that we didn't cover related to Purple Martins, or if you have another.

Forest bird question that you want us to address in a future episode, let us know, leave us a comment, or send us a message on our website at inthewoodspodcast.Com. You can even leave us a voicemail and we can play your voice on a future episode. As we attempt to answer your question. So, Try out that feature.

Okay, Lorelle. So lightning round what's your favorite tree?

Lorelle Sherman: I would have to say the yellow birch. I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania in Appalachia and the yellow birch is really a magical tree. It's got golden, shiny, shimmering, peel bark and its roots are gnarled.

It'll just grow right on top of a big boulder in a creek. It's just really wild the way that their morphology is.

Lauren Grand: Cool. I don't think I've seen one of those, so I'm excited to look it up when we're going to be all done. Okay, what's the most interesting thing you bring with you in the field, whether it's in a cruiser vest or a field kit?

Lorelle Sherman: So, when I was working with Purple Martins I, I brought giant insect nets attached to a drone in the field to see if I could collect insect samples. So, a little bit big to fit in your cruiser vest, but I was trying to see what insects were in the stands that I was finding the Purple Martins in there.

So yeah, it's just some really odd nets.

Lauren Grand: Okay, cool. I bet you got really good at swinging those. I'm not very good at catching insects. Okay and then the last question is what resources can you recommend to our listeners if they're interested in diving a little bit deeper into learning more about Purple Martins?

Lorelle Sherman: So, the Purple Martin Conservation Association is a nonprofit that if you go on their website, they've got more information than you could ever need about Purple Martins. Everything from their habitat to their movements, their migration patterns. Conservation, all kinds of stuff. And then I also have a paper out with Joan Hagar.

It's called the Snags the Limit Habitat Selection Modeling for the Western Purple Martin in a Managed Forest Landscape. So that one's available and soon there will be another paper on Purple Martin diet.

Lauren Grand: Okay. Wow. You've been busy. Sounds good. Okay, great. So, we'll be sure to have links to the two that are available now on the website.

And once that third one's out, we'll add it. So

Lorelle Sherman: yes,

Lauren Grand: come back and visit the episode page. Every once in a while, for one that one to pop up soon. Okay. Well, man, I just feel like I learned so much from this episode and from talking to you and I'm really thrilled to go find one of those nest boxes and add it to our list of resources for everybody to have their half-moon, their nest box on their property next to maybe their latrine outhouse that also Has a half-moon.

I don't know. Maybe we can have like a matching set guide somehow.

Lorelle Sherman: I like that idea.

Lauren Grand: Okay. Well, thank you again, Lorelle, for joining me today and having this conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to teach us all about Purple Martins. Yeah. Thanks, Lauren. This was fun. Yeah, great. That's a good excuse for me to find another reason to chat with you.

So hopefully you'll be back on and join us sometime soon.

Lorelle Sherman: Absolutely.

Lauren Grand: Okay.

Credits and Acknowledgements

Lauren Grand: That concludes another episode of in the woods. Join us in a couple of weeks to explore another topic on Oregon's amazing forest until then what's in your woods.

The In the Woods podcast is produced by Lauren Grand, Jacob Putney, and Scott Leven good, who are all members of the Oregon State University Forestry and Natural Resources Extension team. Other members of the team who've been involved in the podcast include Carrie Berger, Jason O'Brien, and Stephen Fitzgerald.

Episodes are edited and produced by Carrie Cantrell. Music for In the Woods was composed by Jeffrey Hino, and graphic design was created by Christina Friedhoff. Funding for In the Woods Is provided by Oregon State University, Forestry and Natural Resources Extension, the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, and the USDA Renewable Resources Extension Act funding.

We hope you enjoyed the episode, and we can't wait to talk to you again next month. Until then, what's in your woods?