Swift As Feathered Arrows

[Kent Justus]

This morning while watching the martins I was treated to an aerial show that was awe inspiring. Our martins so often fly with moderate to even slow speed while around their colony sites. We enjoy the grace and beauty of their form and flight, but every so often we just want to see what these creatures of aerial perfection are really capable of. We see the distinctive signs of high speed capability, the sharply pointed wings and tail, the torpedo-shaped body, but we want to see them put on a show of unrivaled speed and agility. I was treated to that show yesterday morning.

The martins were perking up because of the sunshine and warmer weather, having recently survived a long cold snap. They were socializing at their gourds with birds coming and going every so often. I watched as a group of about ten martins flew higher over the gourd rack into the blue sky and engaged in some insect catching. Suddenly, a female martin started flying much faster initiating a game of chase with a black male and then all of the martins narrowed their wings and closed their tails into tight spines and started flying in circles up and down, to and fro, making lightning turns and flying with incredible speed. At first I thought an unseen enemy might have been making its presence, either a merlin or peregrine falcon from the speed of the martins, but no. This time, the martins were merely at play with one another showing off their supreme aerial abilities that earthbound mortals can only marvel at with dropped jaws.

Rarely do I see the martins fly with such speed. I have seen male martins chasing females in spiralling dives from so high they are barely visible and ending up near the treetops in seconds. These are truly times that I give thanks for witnessing these beautiful creatures and feel lucky that I can see and have witnessed these thrilling sights. My passion for these birds is renewed. - Kent

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Thanks for describing the sight, a truly amazing bird

[RC Moser]

I watched one tonight High up above my Colony. All of a sudden he folded up his wings and came screaming down on about a 70 degree angle. He had his wings folded back like a F111 fighter jet with wings sweep back. I swear he must of been going 90 MPH and about 15 feet from the house he opened his wings and made a prefect landing all in about 6 seconds.

[roblrich]

I witnessed the same thing today Kent. Usually, if the weather is decent at all, my martins are gone for the day feeding. But today our weather finally seemed like spring, reached the 60's, and the ASY's that have made it back so far came back to the colony on four different occasions today.

The wind was very brisk, and it was like they were showing off riding the wind and dodging telephone poles, trees, buildings and such. I got concerned and started to yell at them to be careful! I mean this one female was scaring me the way she was riding the high winds and darting here and there. I swear she must have been flying in access of 85 mph when she rode the strong wind, was coming down in a swift deep, swoop, and turned at the last second to miss a telephone pole. And she did this for no apparent reason but she was having fun.

Mine were around quite a bit today during the warm weather break. They were investigating all the new gourds that were up, trying new flight paths it seemed as I had removed a large persimmon tree during the winter, and it has really opened up some flight paths around the gourd racks. It has also opened up some arguments with my wife as she liked that tree. Oh well, too bad.

Changing the subject, I just finished watching a movie called, "Elizabethtown". They really shot this movie around here as everything in the middle of the movie is very familiar and recognizable to my family. Anyone that watches it think of my martins enjoying that Kentucky weather as they are in shouting distances of some of the places in the movie. The movie was evidently set for the summer, around June or July of 2005. So it was probably actually made in 2004. But anyways, it was a great depiction of Kentucky as I know it.

[Bob Rogers]

Kent,
Good verbal "pictures"---good tos ee one of your posts again on the forum.