Last year I discovered that a giant colony of purple martins roosted at Highland Mall every night at sunset.
They’ve returned once again. They’re roosting in a slightly different location, on the property of the Wells Fargo, just across the street from the North Side of the mall. It seems like there’s not as many as last year, but last year I saw them a month later into the summer, so they’re probably still finishing up fledging the chicks and the rest will join up later.
You can get a better idea of the size of the swarm from the video I took, which is much better than the video I made last year. The previous video got a link from an Audubon blog! But it nevertheless only racked up about a hundred views. *sigh*
From some of the reading I’ve done about this particular roost, the purple martins have been shifting the roost by a few hundred feet every summer, slowly working their way northward. The birding community initially located this swirling flock of swallows because it showed up on Doppler weather radar!
This is indeed one of the great unsung attractions of the Austin area. It even has an entry on Roadside America, although the entry is marred by a horrid slur from a Mister Robert Baumgardner who says that purple martins do not roost in trees, do not flock, and have already left for South America by June. Therefore, Robert Baumgardner claims, they are not purple martins, they are grackles.
Bob, that has got to be one of the most amazing series of wrong assertions I have ever heard. Just go and look at the stupid birds, Bob.
