Last night (Wednesday) around 8pm I checked on the two purple martin nests
on the lower Duwamish at the Port of Seattle Terminal 105 viewpoint, and saw
two nestlings looking hungrily from the entrance of one box. It was nearly
45 minutes until I saw a female come and feed them. The other nest was quiet
until about 8:40 when a male dropped in and quickly left, presumably feeding
some young ones. After an hour of observation I had briefly seen just one
adult male and two females, and the nestlings that had been peering out the
entrance. There may have been more than two nestlings in the one box, but
only two can squeeze their heads out at once. By 9pm it was getting too dark
to track what was going on, but a few minutes before I had seen the male fly
high and far to the west, toward the greenbelt.

I hope to check again today, but earlier in the evening. I would expect the
fledglings to use the nest for about a week after fledging, as opposed to
some other swallows that seem to disappear very abruptly.

While the martin watching was a bit slow, salmon action in the river was
busy with tribal gill nets and boats; leaping salmon were commonplace, and
at least a dozen boats were tending the maze of nets that were suspended in
the water from nearshore pilings in the river and Elliott Bay.

Kevin Li
Seattle, WA
e-mail: kevin.li at metrokc.gov