Valid Reasons to Put Up a Martin House
So you want to attract Purple Martins because of all the good things you've heard about them? Such as watching them fly is a lot of fun. Ok. Watching them live in their martin condominiums is fun. Ok. They are a handsome bird and fun to observe. Ok. They take easily to living by humans so long as all of the space requirements are provided. Ok.
Invalid Reasons to Put Up a Martin House
If you are thinking about putting up a martin house because you've heard that they "eat up to 2,000 mosquitoes per day" then that's not ok. Just about everyone has heard the mosquito eating claim. A number of martin house manufacturers have been making that claim right on their packaging, and have been doing it for years. Why? Because it significantly increases the sales of their product.
Some manufactures even promote this myth with free items such as the button shown in fig.1. But it's a myth and nothing more than a myth. The April 1998 issue of BIRDER'S WORLD published the following excerpt taken from page 36:
"...Approximately thirty-five papers exist in the scientific literature that deal with the insects taken by Purple Martins. In only a fraction of these diet studies were mosquitoes ever found, and even then in such small numbers as to be considered insignificant or accidental. Being the largest North American swallow, martins actually select the very largest of our flying insects. Dragonflies, damselflies, cicadas, grasshoppers, katydids, moths, butterflies, wasps, beetles, stink bugs, mayflies, bees, midges, and horse flies make up the bulk of their diet. A martin and a mosquito rarely cross paths since they fly at different heights and at different times of day."
