Don and Carolyn Vinton are long-time fans of purple martins and have gourds on their houseboat, too. After Dave Fouts, aka The Purple Martin Man, passed away, his sister Judith and friends including Rita Price have been trying to figure out how to carry on his work. One current big problem has been the sorry state of the wooden houses Dave installed on pilings along the channel. Don Vinton volunteered to work on replacements this year.
But oh! what a harrowing and magnificent thing he has done. The river is low, and, wearing a GoPro camera, Don climbed high up a ladder from a boat below to install these two-story "townhouse" purple martin houses that were built by (a group of children?-- I have to check) whose names are on the bottom of the nest box.
You can see the whole 10-minute YouTube video at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuRjTV1v-f8&feature=em-share_video_user
I helped Dave years ago do a similar thing, but the river was much higher then and the pilings weren't so decrepit, so even though I thought what Dave did was scary, what Don did is much more so. Afterwards I asked him about it and he said the guy in the boat below was keeping the engine revved up just enough so that the nose would stay steady 'held" by the pilings. At one point the engine conked out and the guy in the boat hurriedly got it started again so that the boat with the ladder and Don high on it would not start to drift away.
In the video Don describes how he is using plastic straps to attach the houses because the pilings are so old he feared they wouldn't hold nails or screws. Below are photos I took when I paddled beneath the new houses -- I think he put up four of them. The other day when I went by I saw a purple martin at one of the houses. Success!
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