Wonder why your neighbor is hanging gourds up? Or why there appears to be an undulating donut on the weather radar?

The answer to both is the purple martin.

The largest swallow in North America, male purple martins are an inky, bluish purple, according to the Audubon Society . Female purple martins and young males are a grayish brown, sometimes with purple spots.

Purple martins in the eastern U.S. rely almost exclusively on manmade habitat, rather than the natural environment.

“If people stop putting up purple martin housing, the population would probably crash by 90 to 95% in just a few years,” said Brad Biddle, a cattle farmer in Marshall County. “I mean they think a white gourd is a house. They don’t see a hollow tree as being a house anymore.”

Relying on humans for habitat is a

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