Best friend Martin for life

[daltonmissouri]

My wife has had the most unusual and exciting (to us) experience with a pair of martins, and we wanted to see if anyone else has experienced anything like this.
We are relatively new with martin housing. We have three houses, and the first year we had three pairs, the next year just one pair, and last year NO pairs----this year, we have seven pairs, so we are thrilled!
But that's not the most exciting part...
The first to arrive, in late March, was a mature couple, and they began making their nest. But we had a terrible storm with high winds, and it blew the pole over and sent the house crashing to the ground, with the nest side facing down.
We went out to investigate after the storm, and the female was up on a line squawking excitedly, but we couldn't find the male. Fearing the worst, I turned the house over, and my wife opened it up. And there was the male, crouching in fright at the back. So my wife gently picked him up and lifted him out of the house, and he flew away.
We got the house back up and the couple came back to their compartment. Over the next few weeks, the younger martins arrived, and the first couple was the only mature ones, so we could tell them from the others.
Whenever we would mow under the houses, the other martins would squawk and fly around, but the mature couple just sat on the balcony and calmly watched us. And then unusual things started happening...
My wife would be working in the garden or pruning her roses, and she would feel a slight wind over her head, and the mature male (and sometimes his mate) would be fluttering right above her head and making those clicking noises we always hear them making to each other. Then, one day, she was down on her knees at the back of our barn fixing some wood that had come loose, and she heard a clicking just to her left----and the mature pair of martins had landed on the ground next to her a couple of feet away and started clicking again. Needless to say, we were blown away by all of this attention she was getting from them, and none of the other martins ever acted this way toward her.
My theory is that the couple remembered that my wife had saved the male's life (or at least freed him from confinement) and that they now trust her----best friends forever? It sounds crazy, but it sure seems like it...
Have any of the rest of you had experiences like this with your martins? Or are we just a couple of crazy Missouri yahoos?

[warbird]

I haven't experienced it but it sounds pretty neat. Congratulations on the save. You probably are a crazy Missourian lol.

[KathyF]

Ha! What a great experience for you and your wife! I bet she is hooked for life now! No, I've never had them do that, but I'm wondering if they're from a colony that had supplemental feeding going on and the colony was either taken down or destroyed by a storm. How was the weather during these events?
Martins are funny birds...this story just adds to their mystique. Your wife is a very lucky lady.

Congratulations on a successful year!

[scottfreidhof]

You are fortunate indeed! I hope they survive to return next year and behave in the same way. The martins in my yard hate me and they really HATE my bird dog.

[daltonmissouri]

In reply to your question about the weather, Kathy, we have had a lot of storms with high winds this spring and summer. There's a large colony about a half a male down the road from us, and we wondered if maybe their poles had blown down like ours and maybe they didn't put them back up right away, and maybe that's why we had no martins last summer and many this year.
And Scott, the rest of our martins besides the mature couple that seems to have befriended my wife are very skittish toward us, too. But we live on a couple of acres and our martin houses are not real close to our house, so maybe they're not very accustomed to us being near them. That's why the mature couple coming so close freaked us out.

[taxidermy lady]

That's really neat!
I do not have martins yet but every visitor gets a whistle tune from me. A ASY male came by one day and I was whistling at hm. He flew completely out of sight and I whistled real loud and he came back like a bullet. It was pretty awesome! He was messing with me!
Good luck

[John Miller]

Scott's comment that his martins "hate" him cracked me up. I manage martins in parks. Thousands of people might walk by and they are okay with it, but they hate me too, especially late in the season. They know I'm the guy who lowers the housing.

[Okie]

I'm with you Sharon. Mine would flush early in the season when I walked through the gate to the yard. I started whistling to them & they became very comfortable with me being around staying on the perch even when I was directly under the pole.
I started whistling a different tune when I was going to lower the house & they would take off & circle above until I was done. So they definitely distinguished between the tunes & their meaning. Now that everyone has fledged & they return every morning to say hi, I whistle to them & they chirp back.
Only time they did not want me in the yard nor my dog is when they had babies ready to fledge. Then they were very protective of the space around the house dive bombing warnings to stay away.

[SouthernYankee]

Wow, that is very cool. It should be very interesting next year to see what they do. I sometimes had them fly around close above me when I stood out on my deck (no roof over it) and I imagined they "knew" me but this is my first year being a PM landlord and I think I get a little carried away (waving, and talking to them) Luckily I have no neighbors close by to witness this behavior