This morning, before the heat of the day, I took two of my grandsons to the driving range at Mizzou's golf course, in Columbia. While they hacked away at the golf balls, I sat in the shade, offering sage advice based on my distant, past experience.
As an added bonus, I was free to watch purple martins as they made sorties above the fairways, oblivious of the missiles launched from the many pads. Since the golf course hosts many nest boxes and hollowed gourds for nesting, it harbors what may be the largest flock of martins in Boone County.
Having wintered in the Amazon Basin, purple martins summer and breed across much of the U.S. and southern Canada, feasting on a wide variety of flying insects. Once relying on natural cavities in trees and cacti, their numbers dwindled with relentless human "development" across the Continent Though man-made nest sites have slowed that decline, the population of these long-distance migrants remains well below its historic size.
