A young purple martin took flight Thursday in Port Moody’s Rocky Point Park.
After some initial hesitation, it launched from the finger of longtime Tri-City conservationist Kiyoshi Takahashi to join a colony based in several nesting boxes affixed to poles planted in the mudflats just off the pier.
Thanks to the efforts of Takahashi to build more than 500 such boxes over the past 20 years, the purple martin will actually have a chance to thrive, said Janelle Stephenson, the hospital manager at Wildlife Rescue.
“Building these boxes for purple martins has been a significant reason for their return,” she said.
The Burnaby-based organization raised the purple martin for the past month, after it was retrieved as an abandoned nestling from a boat on Salt Spring Island. Stephenson said the little bird, which is actually the largest of the swallow family, had to be fed mealworms by hand every 15 minutes from dawn to dusk. As it grew and strengthened, it was moved into larger and larger enclosures, spending the last week in an aviary getting its wings.
Takahashi, 86, said the purple martin is an important species for its ability to eat a lot of insects, which it catches while flying as high as 500 feet off the ground.
“I love purple martins,” Takahashi said.
After installing the first nest boxes at Rocky Point in 1992, Takahashi said it took a few years before the birds returned to the area and settled in.
“Since then, there has been a steady increase,” he said.
Stephenson said it was important the purple martin be released close to an established colony so it could build new family ties. The birds help care for each other, pitching in together to bring food to nestlings in the boxes. In the winter, they migrate as far as Mexico and Brazil.
Diana Fitzgerald, who helped care for the orphaned martin, said it was a thrill to watch the bird hop out of its bucket to see the wide world for the first time, flutter to her shoulder, and then to Takahashi’s finger, before heeding the calls of other martins and joining their flock.
“He really performed,” she said.
