A sad, sad day today. I received a phone call early this afternoon letting me know that Dave Fouts -- aka The Purple Martin Man -- passed away on Saturday. His sister Judith phoned with the bad news. He had a sudden heart attack and didn't recover. Less than a half hour before that I had added Dave's name to a list of people to invite to our Greenspaces 25th Anniversary celebration event.
She is planning to set up a memorial event for him on Sunday, April 7th at Howell Territorial Park. Dave loved the island and leaves a legacy of purple martin gourds and houses that he found or built and maintained over decades. He single-handedly helped to bring back the purple martin, a designated sensitive species in Oregon.
Last summer he built a purple martin gourd setup for me (see earlier post). Today I went out and lowered it to half mast, and tied a black sweater on it as a memorial "flag."
He had just called me last week and we were talking about how it was getting to be time to clean out the gourds from last year's nesting. I did that today, and below is the material that was in the two gourds where birds nested.
godspeed, Dave. I miss you already.
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