Three images taken at the recent banding of Purple Martins at the Nepean Sailing Club.

Top Image: Portrait of a male Martin with a beak full of bugs waiting to feed its young.


Male Martin, having lost patience with the banding, ate the bugs himself and is now waiting on a tree branch from which he shortly took off to return to the hunt. (Perhaps, in the extreme heat, there is a time element within which dead bugs need to be consumed. Perhaps that is why they were eaten by the adult who then left to find some fresh kill.)


Like the male, the female eventually lost patience and ate her beak full of bugs before taking off to catch some new ones.