Purple Martins

3 Crabs Colony

May 25, 2026

This year the first Purple Martin male scout to return to 3 Crabs was reported on April 15th, two days earlier than last year. I just missed it that day, but found it the next morning. More birds arrived over the next few weeks, and on May 9th, International Migratory Bird Day, Ken and I counted 32 PUMA. There were likely more that we didn't see. After three weeks resting, feeding and claiming their nest boxes, they began gathering grass, sticks, and wet seaweed to build their nests.

First male Purple Martin scout. 4/16/2026

First observed nest building. 5/6/2026

First observed nest building. 5/6/2026

Last year we had a banded female nesting in Box 4C out on the tide flats. Today I photographed this banded female collecting wet seaweed and mud and delivering it to Box 206 adjacent to the parking lot. Hopefully we will be able to get the numbers from the bands. Both birds have a green color band on the left leg. If this is the same bird, it was banded on July 26, 2020 near Cathlamet in Wahkiakum County, Washington.

Banded female collecting wet material for nest. 5/24/2026

Banded female delivering nesting material to Box 206. 5/24/2026

Her mate helps gather and deliver nest material

This is the mate to the banded female. 5/28/2026

Today is special. He flew up to perch on the nearby power pole. She remained, preening, for three minutes, then joined him.

Banded female with her mate. 6/1/2026

They are now officially a mated pair.

Hey! Get a room! 6/1/2026

Today the female spent several minutes preening while perched on a power line. As she moved around the green band on her leg kept rotating. It took 50 shots before I finally had three that captured all the letters and numbers. Yes! This female is the same female we had here last year, with the green color-band showing WA W018.

Although this female was banded as a chick in the nest in 2020, 200 miles south of 3 Crabs at the Julia Hansen Butler Refuge, for some reason she came here last year and again this year. So this is her sixth round-trip to southeast Brazil, approximately 8,000 miles each way! The average life span of Purple Martins in the wild is estimated at 5-7 years. Will she be back next year?

Click each image to see a close-up of the band.

Green color band showing WA W. 6/2/2026

Green color band showing W 01. 6/2/2026

Green color band showing 18. 6/2/2026

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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