Community Spotlight: Bird-Friendly Bemidji Celebrates At Purple Martin Fest

The Bemidji community has a unique opportunity to help our friends that fly in the sky, and as an official Minnesota Bird City, it’s safe to say the community takes that responsibility very seriously.

“This is all sort of an approach to making not only the public aware of all the bird opportunities and how bird friendly Bemidji is, but it’s also an opportunity for us to promote that. I mean, we have a lot of birds! Standing here, I can hear about 8 or 10 different species,” says Dr. Brian Hiller, a wildlife professor from the Bemidji State University Biology department.

The annual Purple Martin Festival is always held around the same time as International Migratory Bird Day. It took a brief hiatus but came back to highlight the bird friendly community as well as bring awareness.

Hiller says, “The group has held what’s called “Purple Martin Fest” a few different times over the years. They held it about four or five years in a row up until about 2015 and then people got busy, a few people moved, and it hasn’t been held since and I thought, ‘this is a good opportunity. Our Purple Martin population here is really growing.’”

The festival is named after the bird that chooses to make Bemidji their home during the summer. Right now, all of Bemidji’s purple martins houses at Cameron Park and around Bemidji State University are at full capacity. That’s equal to around 300 pairs of purple martins, which may sound like a lot to take care of. As humans, it’s important to remember our role in making sure all the birds are out of harms way.

“We see a lot of things like window strikes where birds hit a lot of windows, so we try to minimize that. Put something that’s – if you have a big picture window, maybe putting some Scotch tape or something that lets the bird know it’s not the forest on the other side. They often mistake it for the trees that they can see in the reflection. Things like keeping cats in doors is another thing we can do,” says Hiller.

Another fact about purple martins is that when they leave here in summer, they’ll be migrating to places all over the world like Brazil. That’s why it’s important to be a good host city and admire them while you can before they head to their next destination.

Hiller says, “It’s been a great opportunity to do work with a species that is a colony nester, so they’re really obvious, really abundant. They’re really gregarious, so they’re actually pretty easy to work with from a people standpoint. They don’t get stressed by people too much. They’re a lot of fun and they come back. They’re pretty and they make a lot of sounds so they’re sort of a great all-around bird!”