From staff reports

The first purple martin of 2005 was spotted Tuesday in Vicksburg and additional birds were seen this morning.

Dan Harmon said this morning he saw his first purple martin of the year late Tuesday afternoon at his home at 614 Smedes St.

“This morning I had two on my box, a male and a female,” Harmon said.

Harmon said he saw the birds again about 8 this morning.

Also this morning, Bruce Reid, deputy director of Audubon Mississippi, reported seeing two pairs of martins in downtown Vicksburg.

Reid said he heard the birds first and then spotted the first pair trying to evict sparrows from a martin house behind the St. Paul Catholic Church rectory. Minutes later, he saw a second pair of birds.

Purple martins are the first of the migratory birds that return to the Southern United States as spring approaches, and Reid said an initial report came from Jackson County late last week.

The martins spend the spring and summer in North America as far north as southern Canada laying eggs and raising their young. The birds then migrate to their wintering grounds in South America.

Reid said he saw the first purple martins about the same time in 2004, adding the first martins, termed scouts, make their appearance along the Gulf Coast in late January or early February. They then begin moving north as more and more birds make the flight across the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

The conventional wisdom, Reid said, is for purple martin fanciers to place their martin houses out about two weeks after the first scouts are seen to reduce the chances that sparrows, starlings or other species will occupy the nesting spaces before the martins arrive.

The Audubon Society’s annual Great Backyard Bird Count, held Friday through Monday of President’s Day weekend, Feb. 18-21 this year, normally accounts for numerous spottings of purple martins each year.