Purple Martins

Purple Martin Nests

July 12, 2025

This morning, after Ken's presentation on the OPAS Purple Martin Project at the Dungeness River Nature Center, a dozen of the participants joined Ken and me at 3 Crabs to inspect the 18 nest boxes hanging from three pilings out on the mud flats. The tide was just starting to rise after hitting its low of -2'0" at 11am, the temperature was 55 degres and the wind was gusting from 14-18 mph...less than ideal for climbing the ladder, but with two people holding it I felt comfortable at the top while using the endoscope to peek inside each box. Fourteen nest boxes had a total of 43-50 chicks and 15-19 eggs. A more accurate count was impossible because the chicks were all piled up on each other, perhaps hiding an egg or another chick. Boxes 4A and 6B still have fully formed nests with fresh green leaves in them but still no eggs. Boxes 1C and 4B are still completely bare. The grasses we primed them with had been removed, probably by Purple Martins that were too lazy to go collect more material for their chosen box..

None of the chicks have opened their eyes yet, and appear to be from 1-6 days old.

To compare the egg counts from June 22nd and today in a new window click: 2025 Purple Martin Census. Hint: If possible, drag the new window to the side so you can see the table while you look at each photo. See if you agree with today's count of eggs and chicks.

To see the June 22nd photos in a new window click: June 22, 2025.

The 18 nest boxes are mounted at the top of the three pilings, about 15' above the sand.


OPAS 113

Purple Martin Colony 3 Crabs Beach


To inspect a box, I lean a ladder against the piling, climb up about 10', and insert an endoscope through a small hole in the front of the nest box. I can view what the camera shows on my cell phone, and Ken and the rest of the team can view it on their their mobile devices from the ground below. If I place the ladder correctly, I can insert the endoscope into all six nest boxes on the piling. I quickly take pictures, then move to the next piling. So we only disturb the birds for 3-5 minutes at each piling.

To see a short (and silent) video of this process in a new window in your web browser click here. The video is 59 MB, so I don't recommend trying to play it on your cell phone. It takes about 15-20 seconds to load.


The "tri-plex" boxes are labeled nA, nB, nC, from top to bottom, so the first piling has 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B and 2C. The second and third pilings continue the numbering system. We write the box numbers at the back of the nest box to make it easy to identify the box from the photo.

Purple Martins typically lay 4-6 eggs, one per day, generally in the morning. Incubation starts with the second to last egg, so the chicks all hatch within a day or two of each other.

  • Egg size: 0.8-1.1" long; 0.6-0.8" wide
  • Incubation: 15-18 days
  • Fledging: 26-36 days

Below are the endoscope photos of each nest.


OPAS 1A

Purple Martin Box 1A at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 1B

Purple Martin Box 1B at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 1C

Purple Martin Box 1C at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025



OPAS 2A

Purple Martin Box 2A at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 2B

Purple Martin Box 2B at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 2C

Purple Martin Box 2C at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 3A

Purple Martin Box 3A at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 3B

Purple Martin Box 3B at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 3C

Purple Martin Box 3C at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 4A

Purple Martin Box 4A at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 4B

Purple Martin Box 4B at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 4C

Purple Martin Box 4C at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 5A

Purple Martin Box 5A at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 5B

Purple Martin Box 5B at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 5C

Purple Martin Box 5C at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 6A

Purple Martin Box 6A at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 6A

Purple Martin Box 6B at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 6C

Purple Martin Box 6C at 3 Crabs. 7/12/2025


OPAS 10B

Purple Martin Box 10B in Dungeness. 7/12/2025

This is a new nest box installed on private property in Dungeness, approximately 0.3 miles south of the parking lot at 3 Crabs.


If you have Internet Explorer 10 or current versions of Chrome, Firefox, or a new iPad, you should be able to play a short video covering one season (2018) of Purple Martin nesting at 3 Crabs.

Click Here to play the video in your web browser (requires an HTML5-compliant web browser). When you finish, click the HOME button at the bottom left edge of the page, or click the picture of me in the upper left corner of the page, to return to this page.

If the video won't play click here to try it with your system software.

Purple Martins

3 Crabs Colony


July 12, 2025

This year the first Purple Martin returned to 3 Crabs on April 17th. After 4-5 weeks resting, feeding and picking their nest boxes, they spent several weeks gathering grass, sticks, and mud to build their nests. After laying eggs, they really objected to other birds getting too close. In the picture below, a Bald Eagle had just chased down a young California Gull, forcing it to land on the water, where the Eagle grabbed it. This happend adjacent to the nest boxes on the pilings, and when the Eagle came up with the gull a male Purple Martin gave chase.


Purple Martin

Purple Martin chasing Bald Eagle that just caught a California Gull. 6/28/2025


Belted Kingfishers frequently perch on the two supports where we mount six nest boxes over the tidal pond by the parking lot at 3 Crabs. But after the Purple Martins take control, they don't let the Kingfisher hang around.


Purple Martin

Chasing away a Belted Kingfisher. 7/3/2025


Purple Martin

Chasing away a Belted Kingfisher. 7/3/2025


Purple Martin

Chasing away a Merlin. 7/7/2024


Purple Martin Fieldtrip

Purple Martin Fieldtrip. 7/12/2025. Photo courtesy of John Gussman.


History

Efforts to establish a Purple Martin (PUMA) colony at 3 Crabs Estuary in Dungeness, WA began in the mid-1990s. Volunteers from the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society (OPAS) constructed four simple nest boxes and hung them on old pilings that they accessed by boat. By 2005 PUMA were returning regularly and OPAS began adding more boxes. Instead of using a boat at high tide, volunteers monitored the nests at minus tides when they could walk out on the tide flats and raise and lower the boxes with a 10' pole.


Purple Martin nest boxes on pilings

Purple Martin nest boxes at 3 Crabs, 5/16/2010


For more information on the history of the OPAS Purple Martin project, see: Purple Martin Nest Box Study,

There are also some excellent blog posts about the PUMA outings here: OPAS Blog,

I joined the other volunteers in 2009 and have helped build, maintain, and monitor the nest boxes ever since. Every fall, after the Purple Martins head south, we bring in the nest boxes to clean, repair, and store until spring. The goal is to put the boxes back up shortly before the PUMA return in early to mid-April. The challenge is that we have to do this task when we have a daylight minus tide. The PUMA do not read our tide charts so sometimes they arrive while we are putting up the boxes, and sometimes we put the boxes up a week or two before they arrive.

Newly retired, young and fit, I took over the task of lowering the nest boxes on a 10' pole, so we could hang them on a nail at eye level. Then we would remove the door, insert a mirror, and take a picture of the reflection of the nest in the mirror.


Purple Martin nest

Checking a Purple Martin nest box at 3 Crabs Beach, 6/22/2009


Finally we replaced the door, raised the nest box on the pole and hung it up again. This was somewhat challenging on a calm day and very challenging on a windy day. After a wind gust nearly caused me to drop a box containing eggs I proposed screwing a board to the feet of an extension ladder so it wouldn't sink in the mud, and inspecting the boxes from the ladder. This created new challenges but over the years we have modified nest boxes, the ladder, and the method of taking photos. Here is what that process looked like:


Checking PUMA boxes

Checking a Purple Martin nest box at 3 Crabs Beach, 7/12/2018 (by Sally Harris)


In 2018, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, North Olympic Salmon Coalition, and about 28 other organizations completed a major project to restore the Dungeness Estuary at 3 Crabs. This effort included removing the 3 Crabs Restaurant and an old bridge over Meadowbrook Creek, rerouting the road and constructing a new bridge, and removing several hundred old creosote-covered pilings left over from the Dungeness Wharf. Yes, including the pilings that we hung the Purple Martin boxes on. To understand the scope of this project, watch the excellent 8-minute documentary produced by local cinematographer John Gussman, titled 3 Crabs, 5 Salmon, 30 Partners.

You may also enjoy my 4-minute video of the piling removal, which happened from October 12-17, 2018. NOTE: this is a 65MB file so it may take a minute to load before it starts playing. For those of you who are fact-checking me, be aware that the Purple Martins you hear singing in this video were half-way to Brazil, having left town in early September. Chalk this up to poetic license on my part.;)

Fortunately, OPAS negotiations resulted in three new steel pilings placed where we specified on the tide flats where we had been hanging the boxes on about ten pilings. If you watched the above video of the piling removal, you will see that they installed the three steel pilings before beginning to remove the old pilings. In 2012 we began experimenting with a new box design, using 6" PVC pipe mounted on a 1x6" backboard and then attached to piling.


New PVC nest box

New PVC nest box design at 3 Crabs, 6/21/2012


The Purple Martins seemed happy with this design and we slowly started replacing old wood boxes with these new, lighter boxes. In June 2018, with permission from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, we mounted two duplex nest boxes in the tidal lagoon adjacent to the parking lot at 3 Crabs.


checking a nest box

New nest box installation at 3 Crabs, 6/26/2018


Since we now only had three pilings, we spent the fall and winter designing and building six Purple Martin triplexes using the 6" PVC pipe. Here is a photo of the new boxes ready to install. What looks like a nose is a handle for pushing the door in or pulling it out. A small nail on each side secures the door. The hole near the top on the right side of the handles is an access hole for inserting an endoscope camera to photograph the nest. So we no longer have to remove the door, which is safer for the birds and for the person on the ladder.


PUMA triplexes

New triplexes ready for installation, 3/17/2019


We also added a stand-off to the ladder. The photo below, captured by John Gussman, shows me inserting the endoscope into Box 1A while looking at the image on my cell phone. When I get the image focused on the nest, and showing the box number on the back of the box, I press a button on the screen to take the photo. I really appreciate the ground crew holding the ladder steady. We can now photograph all 18 nests in under 20 minutes, vastly reducing the annoyance factor for the birds.


checking a nest box

Checking a Purple Martin nest box at 3 Crabs Beach, 7/12/2025. Photo courtesy of John Gussman.