Thanks everyone; I love all my birds, but I live for the nearly four months that the Purple Martins are here.
We have a scraggly, misshaped white spruce tree in the front yard - on the opposite side from the gourd rack - where I have all the bird feeders. I would cut it down, but the birds love it. We have the sweet little mourning doves and the super-sized Eurasian collared doves, too. All the usual feeder birds visit and any day now I will have the northern orioles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, Cape May warblers, hummingbirds, and joy beyond belief.
Hi Lynnie, the ones with the lighter chests are the newly fledged juveniles. The ones with darker-to-very-dark grey chests are the adult females, and the males are solid black. They will all have flashes of purple and blue iridescence. They are rather large, but have short, stubby swallow type tails.
I have a "blue bird type" nest box 35 feet away from the gourd rack; it is for the Tree Swallows. TSs will run off the martins if I let the TSs try to nest in the gourds; one pair would claim and defend all 15 gourds. If there is a nest box, or a hanging gourd, 35' from the martins the TSs will claim it, leave the martins alone. The TSs will also keep all other tree swallows from hassling the martins since the first TS pair won't tolerate any other TSs around.
The same holds true if I were lucky enough to get a pair of blue birds checking out the martins' gourds. I would set up a second blue bird box, 25' from the gourd rack on the opposite side from the TSs. BBs move in; keep other BBs at least 150' away, ignore the martins and the tree swallows. Peace and harmony and lots of chicks.
This is called the "Tree Swallow Protocol." I learned about it from a PM forum (PMCA) after I had a problem with TSs bothering my martins one year.
Right now I have robins checking out a nesting shelf near the eaves of the garage; chickadee-dee-dees peaking in a box at the west-end of the veggie garden, and house finches singing love songs in all the trees. The gold finches magically turned brigt yellow this week after being drab olive all winter, and the grass is beginning to turn green.
Happy, Happy, Happy!
Here's a close up of one of my breeding pairs. The male is in the front.