Subject: [Tweeters] Purple Martins
Date: May 26 11:58:37 2009
From: stan Kostka lynn Schmidt - lynnandstan at earthlink.net


Hi Tweets,

As I do every other day or so this time of year I went to the
Tweeters website this morning and did a search for "martin", and
came up with 66 hits. Wow! That is no doubt a record, so I just
wanted to remind folks that there are many color banded martins out
there, with a coded color band on one leg and a smaller federal
aluminum band on the other leg. Both bands are coded, the federal
bands are just about impossible to read without the bird in hand,
but, the color bands can be read with a scope when the birds are
perched, it takes a bit of patience, and how well you can see the
band depends on distance, lighting, and wind conditions. I
remember back in the summer of 2005 standing at Shilshole at low tide
trying to get a read on the first coded color band Kevin Li had ever
seen there. After some hours of misses, I began to retreat up the
beach as the incoming tide was at the tops of our boots. Eventually
we got two confirmed reads on A626, Kevin read it first and I did a
followup, a subadult female banded the previous year as a nestling in
Snohomish County. That was one of a very few southward dispersals
we had documented at that time, so we didn't even care about our
cold wet socks.

So please keep an eye out for banded martins, even if you cant read
the entire band, just knowing the band color and which leg it is on
will tell something. I have a rather comprehensive database of
martins in Washington, and would be happy to share it with anyone
who wants to go looking for martins. You never know what particular
bird you might find.

Hoping for good weather this year.

Stan Kostka
lynnandstan at earthlink.net
Arlington