This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. See the full interview below.
Zach Steinhauser is a Eco-tour operator based out of Lexington SC who, for the past 3 years, has been taking tourists to view North America’s largest Purple Martin migration roost. His tours began when he found out a surprising fact about this species; they almost exclusively nest in birdhouses. That fact got him thinking, “What happens when people quit putting up these birdhouses?” A thought that drove him to do more than provide up close encounters. He decided to make a documentary on the matter. For the past 1.5 years he has traveled all across the country chasing Purple Martins from the Great Lakes to the Deserts of the Southwest in search of the last remaining natural nesting martins and to understand what people can do to keep this species around. He just recently returned from an expedition to Brazil where these birds are known to spend the winter months in the tropics of the Amazon Rainforest.
This interview was recorded on April 10, 2020.
Resources:
- Purple Haze documentary: https://www.purplehazeacfmovie.com/
- Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/PurpleHazeAConservationFilm/
- Instagram account: @purplehaze_documentary
- Wingard’s Market: https://wingardsmarket.com/
Fiona Martin (FM):
Welcome, Zach. Welcome to The Eco-Interviews. How are you doing today?
Zach Steinhauser (ZS):
I'm doing good. How about yourself?
FM:
I'm doing well. We are both located around Columbia, South Carolina but we're right in the middle of the coronavirus, so we're doing our social distancing interview over Zoom. This is par for the course actually, most of my interviews have been with people overseas. I was hoping to do it in person, but we make do with what we have to do right now.
ZS:
Yeah.
FM:
Well, Zach is an eco-tour operator based out of Lexington, South Carolina who for the past three years has been taking tourists to view North America's largest Purple Martin migration roost. You just recently returned from an expedition to Brazil where these birds are known to spend the winter months in the tropics in the Amazon rainforest. Now, there's lots of stuff that happens in between you being a tour operator and going to Brazil, but let's start with the background about yourself. Tell us about yourself, Zach, and then how you became interested in Purple Martins and started the eco-tours on Lake Murray, correct?
ZS:
Yeah, definitely. So I guess how I got into purple martins. My family is from here and so I grew up when we would come to visit my grandparents, we would go out to see the purple martins on the lake and it was just kind of the thing to do here in the Lake Murray/Columbia area. Every summer for three months just purple martins. These little birds just all gather up on this one little island called Bomb Island out in the middle of it, and people just go and we'll spend like a good two hours out on the water enjoying the sunset, watching the birds, hoping they don't get pooped on.
So I grew up doing that and never really thought twice about that phenomena or anything like that, and went on into college, got my degree in wildlife ecology and conservation because I've grown up loving wildlife. I'm a loyal follower of Steve Irwin. I just wanted to be him and so just came out of college wanting to be a wildlife biologist but kind of saw some issues there, had a crisis of faith with that whole field, and got home and started working for Wingard's Market which is a local garden center here in Lexington.
One night we were out at Bomb Island and I was with my folks. We were on their boat and they were saying, they wish businesses would pop up and start doing tours or something like that. So that seed was planted and we had to sit on it for about a year because it was at the end of the season and then when it came time to get things rolling and I want to say we started like that March or February at my job working at a garden center. I work as a naturalist and so we just provide opportunities for people to view wildlife in their backyard and this is the ultimate form of that job.
So I approached my bosses and I asked them because they're big purple martin advocates. We got to talking and they loved the idea of being able to run boat tours out to go see the purple martins and running it through the business. We found a captain, a local captain in the area who was legally allowed to run these tours and we just chartered three nights a week and we sold out in our first season. It was incredible. We thought there would be no demand but we opened Pandora's box with it.
I guess my specific interest with martins came when I started my job as a naturalist. I was at a trade show looking for different products to sell for backyard wildlife at our shop and we were listening to, I think it was the host or one of the speakers who was talking and he made the mention that all purple martins are born in a birdhouse. I heard that and it just hit me. I was like, "Wait, what?"
So after that talk, I approached the speaker and I was like, "Is that true?" He confirmed his statement to me and then luckily there was a specific nonprofit that focused with purple martins called the Purple Martin Conservation Association. I went to their representative. I asked them the same question, "Is that true?" They confirmed that with me and if I'm hearing this from multiple sources, I was like, "Holy crap."
It all just kind of kick started with me because I'm conservation minded so I'm all about trying to save whatever wildlife is in trouble. It kicked my butt into gear about wanting to push heavy on purple martin products at the shop and then also just be a voice for them in my area. That's where that all started. That was about three and a half years ago and every tour I take, I always tell people that every bird we see out on the island was born in a bird house and make it a point to show people what a purple martin house looks like while we're out on the lake because people usually have them set up.
FM:
Wow. That's incredibly interesting. Tell us more about the purple martins and then about their natural habitats. I'm not even aware of the season of when they're at Lake Murray. Can you tell us a bit more? Obviously, they're born in a birdhouse so when are they born and then what is their migration pattern? Because obviously it goes all the way down to Brazil. So tell us a bit more about that.
ZS:
Yes. So purple martins are technically called a neotropical migratory songbird. So it's basically a bird that will spend a certain percentage of the year at point A because environmental factors are very favorable to them. And then when seasons and factors shift or change, they will go elsewhere to basically warmer weather where the factors are similar if not better than where they were at point A down to point B.
So martins themselves, they're experiencing all different kinds of habitats. The reason why they're going back and forth on their migration is because they're chasing insects. Basically for a martin, I would say classified as an aerial insectivore and that means whatever is flying around insect-wise, its food to them. So they're eating butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, moths, wasps, and bees.
So they're going back and forth. They're basically chasing the bugs. That's how migratory songbird migration... I just did double positive there. But that's how a songbird migration evolved. Birds were just chasing bugs in favorable conditions. A lot of people like to think when they're moving back and forth, they're nesting at both places. That's not true. It's been found out that when birds are migrating from the tropics of South America and Central America, and they're coming up to North America, they are only nesting in North America.
So basically when you have kind or this giant influx of warm weather with insects and perfect conditions, perfect temperatures, the best place to have a family. That's where migratory songbirds are nesting is up here and then when they migrate down they're basically training up their nestlings after they hatch and then they'll all have to make their way down and then their nestlings, when they make their way to the their end destination that's where they learn to basically become whatever species they are. Thousands of bird species migrate all around the world whether it's through North America and South America or through Africa into Europe or even in Asia and Australia.
FM:
I lived in Venezuela about 10 years ago and they had big murals of the cardinals on the side of the buildings. I thought that reminds me of South Carolina. We have cardinals too so obviously the cardinals are going back and forth between South Carolina and Venezuela. Similarly, the martins are doing Lake Murray, I would think, when it's hot. So is that May until August, September and then they go to Brazil the other part of the year?
ZS:
Yeah. So the season for martins on Lake Murray, so when they're gathering up at Bomb Island is, I classify it from Memorial Day to Labor Day. That's just kind of when I see significant numbers all there. But they may be there a little bit earlier, a little bit later. The thing with Bomb Island is that martins aren't nesting there. They're just using that island as a pit stop along their migration back down to South America.
FM:
So where's their northern point? Where do they actually nest?
ZS:
So martins, their nesting range is from South Florida all the way up to Southern Canada and then out to the Rockies and then you have some populations on the West Coast as well going up to similar range maps to Southern Cali all the way up to Vancouver.
FM:
Yeah. So there's two things I'm thinking about in terms of human interaction. You mentioned that they live on flying insects. Humans’ use of pesticides and home pesticide is very popular. Does that affect them at all?
ZS:
With home pesticide, not as much. It affects other birds and other wildlife that you can find around the house for sure. But it's more so in agricultural settings. So martins themselves like really open areas. So an agricultural field, a prairie, lake, river. They're all very favorable. So what's happening is all these farmers are spraying pesticides and they're also using a pesticide known as a neonicotinoid so it's a systemic and it works its way into the seed of a plant then it's basically just a toxic plant.
Bugs will use it like pollinate it or sip the nectar and they're ingesting that toxin and then you have that poison moving from the insect into the martin, which is feeding on those insects. And so when all these martins just gather up and eat so much toxic food, I mean they're going to basically expire and we're seeing a huge drop-off right now on populations of native songbirds that are grassland birds. So like sparrows and larks and stuff like that as well as the aerial insectivores like martins and swallows and swifts and stuff like that. All the evidence is pointing to those feeding habits affecting those birds.
FM:
Thanks for shining a light on that. It's important for people to understand. And then the other aspect of human interaction, you mentioned that all purple martins are born in birdhouses, man-made birdhouses. So obviously man-made birdhouses are a fairly recent human invention, let's say, the last 100 years. What were they doing before that and what caused this change?
ZS:
So when martins nest, they're what's classified as a secondary cavity nester. So a primary cavity nester example would be that of a woodpecker. Woodpeckers drill holes into dead trees or sometimes living trees and they nest and raise their babies in there and they're the first go into that cavity that they created. Then either later that season or the next year, next nesting season, a purple martin... Or the best example is a bluebird. It's an easy bird, backyard bird to identify. You stick a birdhouse out for it, and they'll nest in it. So they are what's known as secondary cavity nesters.
So there's the cavity that's already there, something's already nested in it and then another species moves in that didn't create the hole. That's what martins are classified as. That's where they would naturally nest and so when you had rivers and lakes that had old snags that woodpeckers would drill into, they were also in very wide open areas and had a lot of bug life so martins would just naturally go to those kind of wetland areas and just make use of those available cavities.
Now, the thing about birdhouses is that they were first documented by, at least purple martin houses, they were first documented by, I want to say Audubon. In his travels, the first couple tribes that he discovered this phenomena with was the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. What the tribes were doing was they would grow gourds and then they would dry them out. They would cut a hole in them and hollow them out. That way they would then hang them up all around their crop fields and then that way you would attract the cavity nesters like martins and other cavity nesting birds like bluebirds and tree swallows.
The reason they would do this is because with their agriculture back then, we didn't have pesticides or anything to keep the bugs down. So the more predators of bugs we had, the more food we would then have for a harvest that would last us throughout the winter. So that's kind of where the start of purple martin housing came to be. Then colonials came and adopted the tradition. They started building these giant condo boxes that had... If you google them, you'll find some that have 50-something compartments in one giant ornate box house. Then others are just more reserved and functional.
FM:
It's interesting, that gourd shape you mentioned because, I am definitely not an expert on birds. We do have some bluebird houses out this year and I just look at my yard. I don't know the difference between two different birdhouses, but I've watched parts of your film and I see those purple martin houses. That's so interesting that that was a Native American tradition brought through from the gourds. That's super interesting. That's awesome. Now I want to grow gourds and put them out. I don't know if we get purple martins where I am or not. Maybe. I don't know.
ZS:
Maybe. The whole thing with martins becoming near exclusive birdhouse nesters, and that's due to as colonials came, they would hang out gourds and put these boxes up but they would also clear a lot of land to make room for their farms and stuff like that. The problem with that was one year martins nesting in a snag and a cavity, that was in a pristine wetland or open field and then the next year or then they migrate and while they're gone, colonials move in, clear the whole land, completely change it. Then the martin comes back to the same exact spot where their tree was and it's no longer there. So now they're like, "Where do I go?"
We got lucky in a sense that they were able to adopt this artificial housing because if they weren't able to adopt to it or adjust to it, odds are martins might not be around as much. They might be outcompeted or might have been outcompeted to extinction if they couldn't adapt to this artificial setting. So we got lucky with them in the first place. But now today as we have all these farms that had birdhouses out for them, a lot of those older generations, and as urban sprawl is becoming a thing, older generations are no longer around and so more suburbs are moving into old farmland and stuff like that. We're losing habitat again. Now, we're at a point where we have a species that's totally dependent on our action to ensure its survival.
FM:
It's so interesting. This might not exist, but is there any research into population fluctuations between going from the old trees to the houses? Did that increase the population of martins? This might not exist because it was a while ago.
ZS:
I don't know about actual documented numbers and data. But I've spoken with DNR a couple of times about just multiple farmland/grassland species and what they've told me is that there was a set number of cleared and altered habitats for farmland. A lot of those farmland/grassland species they boomed, because there's just that much more habitat there for them. Now, it's at a point where we started doing a lot more efficient pesticide use which is having environmental ramifications. And now we're at the urban sprawl area as well. It's also just habitat mismanagement or not taking care of the land as properly. So a lot of those farm species are now coming back down at much steeper rates than we were anticipating.
FM:
So obviously all of this has put you on the journey to do this documentary film, Purple Haze, right? And it's about the plight of the purple martins which we've discussed a little bit, but feel free to go into it more. What have you learned on this journey and what are some really important takeaways as you've traveled North and South America following these birds?
ZS:
Yeah. I never thought I would care so much about species that I never thought twice of when I was starting this journey. Let's see. I guess what got me started was I always wanted to be a wildlife filmmaker and I thought it could be as easy as just jumping in or finding the right camera crew, and going off on adventure that way. That was not the case but luckily I found out about the martins and it was just right in my backyard. So it was super accessible. It's super easy for me to start. And so jumping into that, I started doing research and finding out just kind of wanted to learn as much as I could about purple martins and tell the story correctly.
I'm finding out really cool things about just kind of their migration, where they're going, the routes. I can't really release cool pieces of it because I don't want to spoil the film. There's also ongoing research that needs that data private until they can publish. A lot of the places they go on their routes, I never would have thought of. It's also fun to see towns and cities that you live in that martins are using or stopping by or flying through on their route. And then also just kind of how diverse this bird is.
So this is a species that is like I mentioned, covers just about all of North America and where it's found except for... I mean, take away the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian Arctic. It's pretty much everywhere. The great thing about martins is that they have a couple subpopulations on the West Coast. They don't nest in birdhouses so they still have those wild natural tendencies. I mean, they're just super adaptable. I found them in the deserts of the Sonoran Desert in Tucson, Arizona where literally I could barely be out in the sun an hour without wanting to die. These birds are flying around miles everyday in 110+F degree weather. I mean, they're thriving.
It just goes to show how durable the species is, how flexible and adaptable they are. Not only that, but birds that I see here in my backyard, I've seen them in Brazil. It was nice, I guess, with the expedition of Brazil just being able to connect with complete strangers about this one species that we both see in our backyards.
FM:
What do they call it in Brazil? What's the Portuguese for purple martin?
ZS:
They call it andorinha-azul, like blue swallow. So that's the Portuguese for purple martin. Not only just the, I guess, martin itself but just the culture that comes with purple martins. Some people with purple martins are... Some people are leisure and then some people are diehard. They'll set up tons of birdhouses. There's a guy I know in Alabama, his name is Joey Johnson. Him and his grandfather run what's called Johnson's World's Largest Purple Martin Colony. They have over 2,000 purple martin houses set up on their property. It's literally like just being in a city of birds. They do one big event every year called their Jamboree. It's usually in June. I'm hoping corona doesn't mess with it too much this year.
I mean just being around the people and understanding the culture of purple martins. I've tried to do some research into, I guess, the way purple martins have affected American culture because literally from the 1800s to within the past 50 to 100 years, purple martins were the backyard hobby for a lot of people because we were in a much more rural setting. So everybody that knew each other had purple martin houses basically. All farm lands had it. Neighbors had it. They would get into competitions with one another and want to have more purple martins in their colonies.
The crazy thing is that conservation of this species was basically a hobby, which was very... It was something that just kind of made me smile, made me happy about it. It's sad to see that that hobby is dwindling right now as most people don't know or these kinds of cultures and techniques and traditions don't get passed on to younger generations. Purple Martin people, they love their birds, to put it that way.
I know one woman she sits in her backyard just about every day looking out for her martins. She's going to be in the film. There's also people who are very passionate about them that they work in their communities to set up colonies around just to give the birds exposure and recruit people to their causes as well.
FM:
Great. It sounds like the purple martin needs a little PR push, and I'm hoping that your documentary, Purple Haze, will be able to do that and generate some interest. I know one thing I find, a silver lining on the corona situation, is that people are starting to look back at those traditions. So we grow our own vegetables in our garden and now all of a sudden everyone wants to grow vegetables because we're stuck at home and we can't go to the grocery store like we're used to. And maybe hopefully there's also a backyard conservancy sort of vein to that as well understanding what's in our yards and around us, and living in harmony with that. So here's hoping.
Let's expand this out a little bit. How does the story of purple martins and this human interaction that seems to be happening in terms of their houses and their habitat? How does that depict man's evolving relationship with nature? That's something you had on your website that I'd be interested to explore.
ZS:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I'd say purple martins and people are kind of like... The hobby itself and like actual landlording is what they call it of purple martins. Me personally, I feel like that's the embodiment of man's connection to nature. That connection has a rough past, dark past because now we've basically... Crap, I'm totally having a brain fart on the word right now, domesticated. We've domesticated a species essentially, quasi-domesticated and it's at the point now where they're totally depending on us to take care of it. And that is somewhat of a symbol to what is going on to the rest of the world.
I'm just trying to use purple martins as a small way to look at the world through a grain of sand type of example because now we have something we have to totally take care of. But it's something very easy to take care of. All you have to do is put up a series of birdhouses for this one species and you can help keep them around. So by doing something as simple as that you can have repercussions later on down the line through insect control. But to take it a step further, like plant the native plant in your garden that's going to cut down on your water use and your irrigation. That's going to purify your air a little bit better. It's going to prevent your house from... If there was ever like a 50,000-year flood where all of South Carolina washes away. There's more roots deeper in the soil to keep your ground more intact. I know that's a dramatic example.
FM:
It's not that dramatic after 2015. Come on. We were both here for October 2015, weren't we?
ZS:
Actually, that was my senior year college so I had to call my folks. I was like, "Are you all right?"
FM:
It was pretty wild. We were fine. We live on the side of a hill, but even our backyard after four straight days of that amount of rain was starting to flood. I was like, "No wonder the city of Columbia is under water." The 25-mile creek that runs close to us was a river. I live in Lugoff, a little tiny town and they had a CNN reporter in waders in the local golf course where me and my husband met showing this flood and they actually had to shut down that golf course. So that flood always reminds me of the place where me and my husband met and now it doesn't exist anymore. It's kind of sad.
ZS:
So it's like being able to do simple things to have a much greater impact in the environment. It's starting to show now with everybody and cooped up inside and all the wild parks are closed to the public. I know there's some fake viral accounts that have kind of created a mess. But national parks are seeing a lot higher wildlife activity in their parks than previously reported. I think I saw somewhere in Thailand monkeys are moving into the city and it's like just a whole street gang. So just by our absence is able to have such an astounding effect on the environment. I guess I'm just trying to raise awareness to teach people how to do the little things that have a much bigger payoff.
FM:
I think part of this and this is themes I've been exploring through courses I've taken and books I'm reading. I just finished Tending the Wild. I don't know if you've heard of that book.
ZS:
Who's the author?
FM:
Hold on. Let me get it for you. So it's Kat Anderson. This is a great book if you want to read that, Tending the Wild.
ZS:
I got you.
FM:
It's pretty intense research into the California Indians and their relationship with the land. I also just finished doing an interview with someone who's talking about Aldo Leopold and him saying that if we treat land as a commodity, then we'll never take care of it. Once we understand that it's our community, then we will learn to love it and take care of it. That's not the exact quote. I don't know the quote off the top of my head but that's the idea behind it. It's interesting. It's something I've been exploring myself because I do think we have an interesting relationship because we use land as a commodity.
It's two extremes. It's either hyper-exploitation of resources which leads to degeneration, and a lot of the environmental issues we have. And then there's the other extreme of the conservation movement that is fencing it off and not touching it at all. It's interesting because it's very much what you're talking about with the purple martins and then Tending the Wild is very focused on this as well is that there are lots of species, plant species and animal species that are semi-domesticated and we work together in harmony, and humans aren't away from nature. We are part of nature. Humans need to relearn this relationship.
ZS:
Oh, absolutely.
FM:
We have that with the work that you're doing with purple martins. People, like I say, getting in the dirt and growing some vegetables or flowers is a great start. So what are your thoughts on that? Because the interesting part for me I feel like the exploitation side is quite easy to see that's not good. Clear-cutting hurts my heart. I hate to say it but I get really sensitive when I see stuff like that, it just looks very destructive. But then I myself went the whole other side and was like, "Whoa, I'm not supposed to touch it. Humans are a virus on this planet." I'm coming around now to the fact that, "Well, that's not true either." There's got to be a better balance. We can live on this planet in harmony without so much destruction. How do we relearn it? How do you see that? I feel like you're much more educated on this and I am with all the work that you're doing and in your career.
ZS:
I guess the way I see it is that nature is a machine and we're the engineers in the sense that while we are part of this machine, we also have the ability to make repairs where needed or make changes where needed. The fact that we're not doing that as effectively or we're so just removed from that idea or from that concept is causing.... I guess instead of fixing the machine, we're just kind of putting band-aids on it or even just playing like a game of Jenga essentially. It's like how many pieces can we take out until this thing falls?
Plus with the, I guess resources extraction side. I mean, they're definitely clear-cutting land for mass development or agriculture. It does suck. There are certain places. I think there's a biologist, his name is EO Wilson. He's the guy who wrote the book. He's the guy. He's a famous ecologist, proposed the idea for what's called Half Earth. And so literally if every country just banded together to protect 50% of their natural wildlands, then if we could still function as a society and the environment could still function to its current quality, or even previous quality could rebound to a degree. So there's that.
There's a lot of people like you say that are on the extraction side or the use side that don't really care. They just want to get everything they can get out of it in the short term benefit and get out as soon as possible. And then you have the conservation side, which I have mixed feelings because I've learned tough lessons through them and how we need to protect things, but at the same time a lot of advocates can be really toxic to the public. You can't blame them because they're very emotional. This is something they're very passionate about.
If something damages it, it hurts them. And so I've dealt with people who have hurt or basically shamed other people for not knowing certain topics or anything like that. They've condemned them. They've even threatened them. I mean, with Cecil the lion is a great example of everybody flipped out over that, advocates and everything. People don't realize lion hunting is a very beneficial thing in Africa. That's a totally different side note and rabbit hole to avoid. But just a quick example. So you have kind of these combating forces that aren't working together and so therefore nothing is going to get done. You're just going to have people playing games trying to get the pieces they can until the game is over. So when people begin to work with each other, they can definitely get a lot more work done for the benefit of something like this than working against each other.
FM:
Yeah. I feel you on that completely. I feel like my inaction in the past was kind of because it was between those two polar opposites. It's either I'm not on the "use everything you possibly can" side but then that... I was going to say conservatory. That's not the right word. Conservation side of it and especially like you said there are some very, very emotional advocates across a whole bunch of stuff, not just conservation, but anything. People are very emotional, but that can like you said, for someone who's just walking into this, it can be incredibly intimidating. You get so scared that you're going to do something wrong or say something wrong that it makes you have inaction, and that's the opposite.
I feel like part of the reason I started this podcast is because I want to make all this accessible and my goal is that people understand that perfection prevents progress. There's no perfect way of doing something. Find something that you are passionate about or that interests you and start with that. Then when you have that confidence then hopefully it spreads out into other things because you can't just wake up one day and be like, "I'm composting. I'm growing a garden. I don't eat meat. I don't drive a car." I mean that's so super overwhelming and not possible for anyone to do.
So for you, who's been in this movement and are focusing on purple martins and your life in conservation and ecology, what would you suggest for someone who's just now starting to wake up to the climate crisis? And also we have COVID-19 that's almost put us in this weird... For those of us who know about climate change, we kind of always thought something crazy was going to happen. We just maybe didn't know it was going to be a pandemic. So we are in a very interesting situation right now. What sort of advice would you give someone who's just starting out, a little bit overwhelmed. We don't want to scare them off, so what can they do?
ZS:
Definitely. That's a good one. I always recommend getting started with conservation. It's really easy. Conservation is all these complex things you see in the news with people going out and tracking lions in Africa or catching crocodiles in Australia, trekking the Amazon. But conservation also is putting a bird house up in your yard whether it's for bluebirds, whether it's for chickadees. With my job, I work with a conservation group based out of Aiken which is an hour west of us. Their main goal is just to conserve cavity nesting birds, and they just put birdhouses up either in public places, on private properties, wherever and they're conserving cavity nesting birds that way.
So I do that, I teach my customers that. You can also just plant something as simple as a native plant like I mentioned earlier. Do your research with native plants and find out which garden centers and stuff like that supply natives and stuff. It's very easy. You can read your labels on your pesticides. I mean, it's okay for you to use pesticides. I mean we all have to at some point. You can reduce your plastic. You don't have to completely cut it out. You can still drive an F-150. Maybe just think about how often you're driving it or if you really need it.
I used to drive a Nissan Titan truck and then I just got sick of paying all the gas prices on it. So I converted to a Subaru and I absolutely love it. It's like getting started with conservation and backyard stuff, very easy and a lot of people like you look at the world view of conservation think like, "Oh, I'm never going to do anything like that or see anything like that so why even try." If you own a home or if you have a yard or anything, you have land that you can do stuff to and convert it to benefit the environment however you choose, whether it's a corner of that property, whether it's the whole thing. You have a lot more capability at your disposal, a lot more things you can do than you realize. Great places to start books, I wish I had them on my shelf but there's a guy, his name's Doug Tallamy. He's written a handful of books all about backyard conservation. It's really simple.
FM:
Nice. Can you give us one tip? I know there's no priority but give us one tip that someone can just start today.
ZS:
To start today? I'd say go buy a birdhouse. Everybody is closed due to COVID-19. I'd say that's a bad tip. I'd say... Crap.
FM:
You can build a birdhouse. I mean, that's the thing that I'm trying to get creative with what we have around the house. I did a video about mulch and I said, "You don't need to go out and buy black mulch. You have leaves in your yard. That's a mulch. You can put that on."
ZS:
Literally, just rake your leaves into your flowerbeds.
FM:
Exactly. Grass clippings. Get creative.
ZS:
Yeah. You can do that. If you have... I'm trying to think. If you have a birdhouse, put it up. If you have a bird feeder, put it up. That's literally just letting you encounter the wildlife in your backyard just through birds. You can literally just start a brush pile. Right now with everybody doing yard work, you have probably a lot of trash in your yard, a lot of natural degradable trash. If you're able to and you have like a corner just pile it all up and that helps so much wildlife. Birds, lizards, snakes, the harmless ones, not the harmful ones. Even small mammals, they like to get in there.
FM:
Bugs as well. If you don't want to use pesticides, there's enough interesting stuff for all the pests to do at the bottom of our yard that they just don't even bother with our house. Give them other things to do.
ZS:
Oh, yeah absolutely. If you do get out, you can plant a native plant. Native plants can host butterflies and moths and they can host a couple hundred species depending on the type of plant. So if you plant like a native tree. That's basically a natural bird feeder in and of itself. All you got to do is just look up and you'll just see all kinds of stuff you would never see at your feeders.
FM:
Nice. What can we do to help purple martins?
ZS:
With purple martins, I'd say, do your research and the easiest thing to do for them is put a birdhouse out. Put out a purple martin housing system because they can come in gourds or in actual boxes. The thing with martins is they're very picky type of bird and high-maintenance in our domestication of them. They like to be about 40 feet away from any kind of tree or building. So you need to find a clear area to put a martin house out.
When you do that, just be patient. I've got a couple martin houses out right now and people like to call me the expert but I don't have martins nesting in them. I'm just the loudest person talking about them in my area. With that, martins, take patience. Once you get it, I mean you literally have a bird that'll be coming to that system for the rest of your life. They'll come back every year to the same nesting site. It's incredible.
FM:
I imagine this is why people get so competitive about it because it's not easy. For the past 30 years, we've had martins come in. I imagine it's like that.
ZS:
Yeah, exactly. We've had them for so long and then some people want to have... It's a numbers game with them. And so I've got friends that are putting martin houses out. Some are getting them faster than me. I'm like, "You guys suck." I think that also speaks to just the breeding population here. I don't think it's very healthy if it takes so long to get martins to nest in a colony. If it was a healthy population, it would probably be a lot faster to have that happen.
FM:
Any reasons or assumptions you can make as to why it's not healthy?
ZS:
It goes back to that pesticide use as well as people putting... Or the farm communities succumbing to urban sprawl, you're losing that habitat. And plus with martins being so loyal to breeding sites, they're going to come back to that site that they came to where they were born. So if I had a guy... The only active martin colony I found in this area is on the opposite side of Lake Murray out in Saluda. And so knowing that, that's a 30-minute drive. So I think it's like 20 miles or something like that. I have to wait for a bird to fly. I’ve got to wait for that colony to saturate and wait for an adventurous bird that wants to set up territory of its own.
At the same time I’ve got to work on outcompeting or keeping all the other competitors out of their colonies because you get like blue birds and other cavity nesters that want to stay in there, move into their colonies and they'll chase martins off. Again, martins are a little high-maintenance but if you love birds.
FM:
I'm not going to take that personally seeing as I am a Martin myself. It's my last name.
ZS:
It's funny whenever I text about it, my autocorrect just puts an apostrophe where the "n" and the "s "go. I was like, "No, damn it." Then say like you're hearing all this and if your property doesn't have so much clear space. You can always work with others, either businesses or your governments or even like churches, public places because odds are, your community has open space somewhere and you can stick a martin rack up. I've done that with bluebird trails working with our city government. Whenever I get done with Purple Haze and can get funding going or diverted into local housing projects, I know our city government would be all about that. I'm going to be working on setting them up here around the lake and around Lexington, and hopefully get people educated and passionate about something they can find in their backyard.
FM:
Yeah. So how can people find you online? And then also you know you mentioned working at the garden center and doing eco tours. How can people connect with you so they can continue to follow the story and learn more purple martins?
ZS:
So I guess for the martin tours, hopefully coronavirus won't be a thing by July, but our martin tours will be offered through Wingard's Market. And you can google it and you'll be able to sign up for a tour on our website when we open them up. Right now signups are closed because there's just a lot of unknowns. We don't really know yet. They'll be able to find us through wingardsmarket.com. Then to follow along with the Purple Haze film, there's a couple places. You can go to our website is purplehazeacfmovie.com. We're on Instagram and Facebook. For Instagram it's purplehaze_documentary. That's the tagline and then the Facebook page for us is Purple Haze: A Conservation Film.
FM:
Great. We'll link everything up in the show notes and make sure we have those right so people can find you. I really appreciate your time with me, Zach.
ZS:
Yeah, I appreciate you having me.
FM:
Yeah. Well, have a great rest of the afternoon. I know you're busy in the garden center, but also we're trying to figure out this new normal. So I hope for the best for us both.
ZS:
Awesome. Cool. I appreciate it, Fiona.
FM:
All right. Thanks, Zach.
ZS:
You're welcome. You have a good one.