Purple martins return to Shockoe Bottom
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It’s purple
martin time
To see the purple martins:
Drive east on East Main Street to Shockoe Bottom. Turn left on North 17th Street.
Cross East Franklin Street and see the birds’ roost trees on your left. Wait on the sidewalk across the street from the trees.
Right now, the birds arrive between 8:30 and 9 p.m. They arrive a little earlier each night.
If you wait a couple of weeks, you’ll see more birds.
The Bottom birds are back.
Purple martins, which roost in Shockoe Bottom trees by the thousands before flying to Brazil, are now arriving in small numbers.
"It's starting up," said Mike Wilson, a biologist with the Center for Conservation Biology, part of the College of William and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Sue Ridd, a member of the Richmond Audubon Society, said she saw about 75 birds arrive Sunday at dusk, and she saw about 100 swoop into the trees Monday.
Last year, the birds' numbers peaked in late July and early August at an estimated 8,000 to 10,000. Scores of people turned out each night to watch them.
City officials announced last week that a purple martin festival, "Gone to the Birds," will be held July 25 from 6 to 9 p.m. The first martin festival, held last July 26, drew nearly 1,000 people.
A proposed baseball park in the Bottom could destroy all, or nearly all, of the birds' roost trees, but city officials have pledged to try to find a way to keep the martins returning to Richmond.
The martins roost in a line of Bradford pears on North 17th Street just north of the 17th Street Farmers' Market.
Last year, people first saw the martins in late June. But Wilson said he wasn't surprised by this year's mid-June arrival.
"I don't think anybody thought of going down there [to look for the birds] this early last year," Wilson said.
Fledgling martins probably took wing in late May. That means the southward migration is the next big event on the birds' calendars.
"It's time for them to sort of switch phases," Wilson said.
Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or
.
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Reader Reactions
Okay, several thousand birds fly into Richmond and the ballpark might mess that up. Now how can you be so sure. You can’t.
I have hundreds of small blackbirds that grace the trees around my house and it takes me weeks to clean up the poop. I love birds but they don’t care where they drop it.
This year, I have been at war with a robin. The bird has adopted my truck. Believe it or not they built a nest on my rear tire which I removed at least four times. I kept moving the truck to different spots in my driveway, even left it at a neighbors house. That bird went to that truck no matter where I put it and insisted on building a nest on the tire. He/she could be found anytime sitting on my rear-view mirrors and on the side of the truck bed. I couldn’t keep the bird poop on my truck fast enough. Each morning I got up, the truck was brimming with the robin’s evidence of being there.
Purple Martins disturbed by a new stadium? I doubt it, they go where they want no matter what you do.
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