St. Louis Post-Dispatch, MO – Apr 8, 2007
By Aisha Sultan
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
With a bucket of thawed crickets and a bowl of mealworms next to him, John Miller cautiously opens a small door on the three-story white birdhouse in Forest Park.
He clears out a space next to the nests inside and inserts a mix of the bugs and worms. It may be the only meal the dozen purple martins flying overhead get for days.
The area’s five-day cold snap, which should warm up to the 50s today, could devastate the city’s tiny population of this species of swallow.
Miller is determined to save them.
ike a parent coaxing a toddler to eat, he has tried every trick to help the birds survive, including flipping dead crickets in the air with a large plastic spoon for the high-soaring birds that feed on insects they catch while flying. But the purple martin is a picky eater.
The wild birds depend on man-made housing structures set up and maintained by bird-loving “landlords” such as Miller. More than a million people in North America try to lure these birds to such housing, yet few take up residence. Once purple martins establish a home here, however, the migrating birds return to that exact spot, from as far away as Central and South America. They begin arriving in St. Louis in early March.
Miller, who lives by himself in Brentwood, has been anxious during the recent cold spell. He worries about a potential die-off, in which the city’s entire population of about 100 or so purple martins could disappear.
Enthusiasts describe the birds as giddy — almost as if they are dancing in the air — and chirping excitedly when they come home. The adult male looks nearly black until sunlight catches glints of the purplish-blue feathers on its body. There’s something enchanting about them, Miller said.
Nearly every day, he jogs by the birdhouses he helped establish in Forest Park. Some of the regulars know him as the “bird guy.” During questionable weather, he checks and feeds the established colonies daily.
On Sunday, Miller carried a ladder, a bucket of worms and an empty shoebox on his rounds. He planned to take home any dead or disabled purple martin he encountered. Miller took a deep breath before lowering the housing from its perch on the 40-foot pole.
“It’s a hobby that can lift your heart — and break it.”
Don Ruis, 46, of Dardenne Prairie, knows that heartache. He has cared for a colony of 22 pairs in his backyard for five years. He keeps a supply of frozen crickets in the freezer for emergencies. But a stretch of rainy and windy days last May caught him off guard.
He saw a bird fall to the ground that looked like one from the colony. When he went outside, Ruis found nine dead birds on the ground. There were seven more dead inside the gourds.
“We lost almost our whole colony,” he said. “It was very depressing.”
The day before he discovered the bodies, two purple martins perched right outside his house and looked in the window.
“It was like they were trying to tell me something’s wrong,” Ruis said.
This time, he has spent the freezing days outside flipping crickets to the birds until they caught on and started feeding on them. He has also stuffed their living quarters with extra bugs since Wednesday.
Not everyone agrees with these tactics, Miller said. Some feel that nature ought to take its course. But Miller feels a sense of responsibility to care for the birds that over generations have come to rely on humans.
Little baggies of crickets and Tupperware containers of worms sit next to the ketchup and barbecue sauce on his fridge shelf. On Easter Sunday, Miller heads back to Forest Park, bracing himself for the worst.
He unscrews the front doors of the birdhouse sections and methodically clears a spot for the sustenance he brought. By the fourth compartment, he faces an adult purple martin huddled inside. Not a good sign. But the bird is still alert, and Miller makes a split-second judgment call.
“I’m not going to take him out.”
Miller is trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. He leaves extra food and hopes the bird is just resting or trying to conserve energy. Miller has ordered more crickets online. He will be back in a few days to check whether this one made it.
