Summerport welcomes hatchlings after constructing Purple Martin home

Jordan Baszner does not consider himself much of a bird enthusiast; he only learned what a purple martin was three years ago, but when the first pair of purple martins showed up at the 22-compartment birdhouse he spent a year planning, he was ecstatic.

The birdhouse, which looks almost like a miniature condominium, is located near a retention pond in the Summerport neighborhood right outside the Keene’s Crossing Elementary School campus.

Baszner, who manages science and environmental education at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, is also part of the purple martin conservation project at Disney, which has erected about 20 martin homes throughout its grounds.

Using the knowledge he learned at Disney, Baszner set out to obtain approval from his neighborhood’s HOA to establish a martin home in his own neighborhood.

"This particular bird species prefers open areas so that they're not near trees where hawks and eagles might get them and they can have a 360-degree view around them,” Baszner said. “So I was looking at this one area in our neighborhood that was near the school and near water and thought well this is a perfect location. So I went ahead and asked our HOA board and the process took about a year because we also had to get approvals from neighbors, and then once we got the OK I asked some of my Disney friends who work with me on the purple martin project to come help me with the construction.”

Baszner used tactics he’d been taught by conservation experts at Disney on how to attract purple martins to newly installed homes, which included plastic purple martin decoys and a solar-activated speaker that would play recordings of purple martin bird songs at sunrise.

"I was weirdly giddy and excited when they finally came, Baszner said. “I'm a typical guy, I mean I’ve never been a bird guy, but to think that after all this work they finally came – it's like the fruits of our labor. And I was also really excited when we got our first egg. I came home, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, we have an egg. We helped create life by putting all the work into this project!'”

It’s difficult to accurately discern how many birds have made their nests in the newly installed Summerport purple martin home, but Baszner estimates about 10 to 12 birds now reside in the home.

Baszner has also used the nests as an educational tool for students at Keene’s Crossing, who line up along the school’s northern fence line to watch the action and get close-up views of the most recent hatchlings in their nests.

"Now that it's up, it's been incredibly successful,” he said. “It took off much faster than I was expecting, and we have way more birds than I was expecting. I didn't think we'd even get any birds the first year. Just because you put up one of these things doesn't mean birds are going to come, it may take one to three years. But then the first pair came, and they had babies and now here we are.”

To keep up with Summerport’s purple martin project, you can join their Facebook group, which can be found at bit.ly/2HDn9DY.