A morning in Georgetown with readers & sweet birdsong

Good morning, DMV! It’s Thursday, April 23.

For Earth Day yesterday, several readers and I met with experts to learn about purple martins and their houses at Georgetown Waterfront Park. It was a fun outing: I took in the vibe, while readers (and Dan, the wildlife expert) took photos.

Entering the park from the southern end of Wisconsin Ave. NW, I could hear the purple martins — North America’s largest swallows — well before I really set eyes on them. The area around their houses and nearby trees is filled with birdsong. They’re a chatty crew, singing and clicking sweetly to each other.

Some background, in brief: The Georgetown Waterfront Park was once a paved industrial area and parking lot. A group of residents, community leaders, and activists raised $22 million to transform it into a park that opened in 2008. In an effort to raise awareness about the natural environment, they decided to add houses for purple martins beginning in 2021.

The purple martin population has declined more than 24 percent in the past 55 years, in part due to habitat loss and competition with nonnative, invasive species such as the English house sparrow and European starling, according to the Purple Martin Conservation Association. Giving them homes helps conserve the species.

Meg Hardon, a board member of the Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park, and Dan Rauch, fisheries and wildlife biologist with the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, met us at the park yesterday to tell us about the project.

It was Dan, Meg said, who suggested houses for purple martins. Purple martins on the East Coast have long relied on humans for their housing: Native Americans hung up empty gourds for them, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dan had seen purple martins across from the Georgetown waterfront around Roosevelt Island, so he thought putting up houses would draw them to this park.

They immediately moved in, Meg said. When it’s winter in these parts, they live in South America; they migrate back north to breed, with the earliest scouts spotted in Georgetown on April 1. About two weeks later, dozens more arrived.

The adult males are an iridescent dark blue-purple with brown-black wings and tail. The females have some gray on their head and chest. They live near forest edges and rivers, according to Cornell Lab. (You can also learn more on the website of the Purple Martin Conservation Association.)

They sing constantly. It’s lovely. They don’t seem much fussed about the constant flow of traffic nearby on the highway overpass. They swoop out of the house over the Potomac to catch insects and drink. They rarely land on the ground. Each year when the birds leave to migrate south at the end of the summer, humans clean out their houses.

Dan and several of the readers who joined me constantly spotted birds over the Potomac.

As we asked Meg and Dan questions, we frequently paused the discussion to look at passing birds. We watched a crow bullying purple martins and perhaps being bullied in return. An osprey holding a fish. Great blue herons high overhead. Some Bonaparte’s gulls. A group of Caspian terns. This black-crowned night heron.

Thanks to Meg, Dan and everyone who joined. We’ll have more outings with experts soon. Meanwhile, do visit the purple martins and hear them sing before they leave to migrate south around late-July or August.

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D.C. resident Thomas Kluzak, 77, took this photo of the Exorcist Steps while exploring Georgetown after the purple martin discussion on the waterfront. The steps feature in the 1973 movie “The Exorcist.”

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