About Venice's St. Andrews East, Plantation Golf & Cc, Venice Florida

What a Thrill it was for this Biologist!!! Shortly after 10 AM, when up in the sky behind a lake (pond) and wild area at Saint Andrews East in Plantation Golf & Country Club, it looked like a "swarm" of African Locusts, but they were PURPLE MARTINS!

My Canadian friends quickly alerted me to the Identification...Purple Martins, both adult and sub-adult, had just arrived from their non-breeding grounds in South America, and by the thousands they arrived. I had never seen so much diving, turning, diving and at times with hundreds in almost synchrony. My "expert" Canadian-Physician friend puts up his re-carpeted (YES, re-carpeted) Purple Martin Condominium every Spring for nesting/breeding, and he is very successful, says he! So, these were 'HIS" Purples swarming around on their way back to Sarnia, Ontario to see what carpet is in fashion in 2010.

Progne subis is their name in the Nature and Bird Books, probably first named by Carl Linneaus, who seemed to name most everything that had a life, plants and animals! These Martins are relatives of Swallows and do the same thing on the East Coast that the Swallows of Capistrano do out there, arriving on the same day each year, to the cheers of thousands!!! Scout birds show up a few days early to...check things out, what else? The Martins way up North go early to Sarnia to see if my Physician friend did indeed change the carpet! They don't hang around if the "Hotels" are dirty.

Picture ID's:...(Top) Look hard and you will see "pepper" over the trees, swarms of "pepper"; (Middle) Moderate swarm of Purple Martins; (Bottom) A Real Heavy "swarm" sometimes almost looking like a "Dust-Devil" growing from the ground. Again, I have never seen anything quite like it, except on the National Geographic Channel, for Grasshopper Locusts in Africa. Google these birds and see when they are due in your backyard...it is exciting!

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