Aliens

Aliens Earl Plato

This nature lover inherited the coloured slides of the late Bert Miller, noted naturalist. One slide taken in 1954 was that of a great stand of Purple loosestrife somewhere in Niagara. When did this evasive plant come to Niagara? I don’t know. For almost ten years I paced off a field on Gorham Road to the west the growing extent of this evasive ALIEN plant. Did I say ALIEN? Of course, I capitalized the word. Now I am not against aliens coming to North America. My German, Welsh and Norwegian ancestors from Europe were aliens at one time. However, some bird aliens from Europe have caused and continue to cause problems for our indigenous bird populations. Those who read my column know I am no lover of House/English sparrows and starlings. They are both ALIENS. The House/English sparrows were first introduced to North America in the winter of 1850-51 and in little time they covered North America. Likewise the starlings in 1890 and they have even multiplied more rapidly. Notice the word “introduce”. This was a deliberate attempt by scientists to have these two bird species do some good deeds. You know the story. Good intentions - bad results. We had two colonies and two large Purple martin houses at the family farm in Sherkston. One year house sparrows settled in the west martin house. What could we do? I am not a killer of birds but we wanted our long time residents, the Purple martins, back in their homes. We had up to 22 pairs of these beautiful birds in the east martin house. We knew about when the martins would arrive from the south in mid-spring. At first we lowered the support pole to the ground. We had both houses on poles that were hinged. We removed any sparrow nests and placed a plastic bag over the box. Cruel? The message was - ALIENS move on!. At the first sighting of some martin scouts we lowered the boxes and removed the covering bags. It worked. The house sparrows moved on. If we had done nothing the aggressive House sparrows with established nests would have probably driven the martins away.
Starlings, a much larger bird than our Purple martins, can bully their way and take over a martin house. I am not familiar with this starling behaviour with martins. Are you? What can you do to move these ALIENS on and away from our natural songbirds and their quest for a peaceful life?