MARTIN PURPLE MARTIN

Every now and then our walks take us down to the Lake and amongst the other people that live there.

Some are visitors, setting down root for the season. Summer cottages groaning with arms and legs, and the walls bursting with the laughter of little kids and young adults, all wishing they could live there year round, and not have to go back to work or school when the leaves begin to fall.

Amongst late afternoon card games of gin rummy and euchre, the kids run around with the dogs, in and out of the lake. The screened back door slams with each entry and exit from the cottages quiet only for an hour or so when Mom calls for "Dinner!"

One of our walks this wet summer evening led us to a fellow I had never met before. He is an avid caretaker for his own summer company, birds named Purple Martins. Migrating from Toronto to Brazil, they stop at his nesting area to refuel and also spend their summer. A summer vacation for the Purple Martins, they know where to go, for they return every year to this gentlemen's sparse but efficient abode.

When I first spied the accomodations, I thought they were some kind of high tech computer equipment or a radar tracking system. Upon closer inspection, however, it was clear to see they were modern looking birdhouses, or nesting gourds as he called them. Some he ordered online, others are natural gourds, painted the same beige color of the modern ones.

"They are a facinating speciman" he lectured as we stood there, mouth agape at all the birds returning en masse. It was feeding time.

"If you happen to see a fledgling on the ground, just pick it up and put it over there" he continued, pointing to a feeding station. Two levels of flat brown platforms were full of seeds. "The others will take care of it as if it were there own."

I thought this odd, as others birds abhor human contact. In fact, if you touch a fallen baby blue jay, the mother will abandon it, once she smells the scent of a human upon it. I asked him about it.

"True" he said. "But not the Purple Martins."

What a world it would be, I thought, if we all just took care of one another.

It was getting late, time for us to get home. The bugs would soon be biting and we wanted to get back home to our deck to watch the sunset.

I realized that I never got his name. So I shall call him Martin.

Martin Purple Martins.