…And I take that back

Turns out the martins haven’t actually left the area, they just moved out of the house. On reflection, it seemed like a bad time to migrate south — it’s still winter on the other side of the equator. Plainly, I don’t know as much about purple martin migratory habits as some people. I seem to remember my mom saying that they arrive in this area around Valentine’s Day, and leave again on June 15th. That’s pretty specific. But she must have meant that they leave the nest on June 15th. Or thereabouts. We didn’t get the house up until late February, and I didn’t see any martins around it until mid-March. Both families of martins were still using the nest a lot on June 15th. But now I see one group of four (mom, dad, two kids) fly over the house once in a while and never land on it. They hang out on the telephone wires out by the road. I’m sure there’s still plenty of good grasshopper hunting in the area. It just goes to show, you should never stop observing, and you’ll probably never be through learning.