Originally Posted by
fishlkmich
My father was voted the "Purple Martin landlord of the year" in 2001, by the Purple Martin Conservation Association. I have studied and worked with this species for many years.
There was a fellow who owned an aluminum products manufacturing business many years ago. When plastics replaced a lot of aluminum applications, the manufacturing business almost went broke. This guy needed a new product line to save his factory. He decided to build Purple Martin products and as an advertisement gimmick, he printed "A purple Martin can eat 2,000 mosquitoes per day!". That is a true statement. "I can eat 5,000 mosquitoes per day." is also a true statement. I don't eat mosquitoes, but I could. The guy was a genius! He still prints this on his martin products and probably 99% of the U.S. population believes that Purple Martins eat mosquitoes. Extensive studies have proven that they don't, but the fable lives on. You should see the size of the dragonflies that martins bring in to feed their kids!
I don't try to convince people that martins don't eat mosquitoes, anymore. But, birds eat during the day. Mosquitoes are generally out in the dusk/dark. Martins feed exclusively on flying insects, high in the air. Mosquitoes are usually close to the ground. It goes on, but you get the point.
Another Purple Martin "host" (the eastern species of martin relies upon man to provide nest boxes and is now totally dependent on us for its continued existence) wrote to me, proudly, about his cat killing a bat. When I reminded him that bats were native, cats were introduced to North America, are the second highest reason for the extinction of small animals in North America and kill simply for the sake of killing, he asked me to remove his name from my list of contacts. No problem.
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