Joe Lapp has turned his 4-acre Raleigh homestead into a sanctuary for dozens of these beautiful, iridescent-winged birds
by Helen Yoest | photography by Juli Leonard
Purple martins are among the first migrating birds to arrive in our area, shimmering through the skies with their blue-black, iridescent wings. “Martins generally return from their winter home in Brazil in early March to the same colony site they used the year before,” says Joe Lapp.
Much like a migrating martin, Joe and his wife, Andrea, moved to Raleigh 36 years ago from a small western New York town called Le Roy. They bought 4 acres in a mostly rural area along Yates Mill Pond Road to call home, about 2 miles from Yates Mill Pond and another 2 miles from Lake Wheeler. “We liked the idea of country living and being reasonably close to Raleigh and Cary,” says Joe.
By 1990, Joe became interested in Purple martins, Progne subis. “These birds are almost solely dependent on humans for housing,” he says. “They’re friendly and enjoy being around people. Plus they don’t mind human contact with their nestlings.” Classified as a native songbird, these martins also have impressive songs and acrobatic skills.
Joe knew that an established colony was close by when he saw the martins visiting his homestead, so he went to work on attracting the birds to his yard. It can take years to attract them, but he wasn’t deterred. First step: creating homes for the birds.
Purple martins are cavity dwellers, and in the wild, they seek natural cavities like woodpecker holes in tree snags. Today, with so much habitat loss, the birds are almost entirely reliant on man-made colonies. These often look like a cross between an old-fashioned clothesline and a small apartment complex, with dozens of gourd-shaped birdhouses hanging from a single frame.
Joe designed his gourd racks after observing several others, using mostly materials from their property. He grew his first intuitively named birdhouse gourds, Lagenaria siceraria, using seeds he received from other martin landlords. Birdhouse gourds are vigorous vines that require sturdy support from a trellis or other structure. Joe leaves them on the vine well after the plant dies to dry out, so they aren’t available for housing for a full year after planting. (These days, he keeps seeds from the previous year’s crop but only needs to plant them every two or three years.) Once the gourds dry out, he preps them to work as houses by drilling holes for bird access, cleanup, nest checks and ventilation.
With the houses installed, Joe played the Purple martin dawn song, a recording of boisterous males chirping at sunrise, for the entire month of March. “I’d place a boom box under the racks and turn it on when I went to work, then Andrea picked it up on her way to work an hour later,” he says. “It was exciting to have our first nesting pairs the first year we installed housing!”
Over 10 years, their feathered residents grew from one rack to an entire colony. “Now, we have around 40 nesting pairs,” says Joe. They live within three racks of 16 houses. Most of the gourds are natural, but he has a few plastic gourds from Purple Martin Conservation Association in Erie, Pennsylvania. “Plastic gourds are more expensive, around $30 each, while natural gourds are free but require a lot of prep,” says Joe. “So far, the birds haven’t shown a preference.”
In peak season, the martins have an average of four hatchlings raised in each nest. “That’s around 240 birds in the air during fledging time,” says Joe. Joe is also an avid gardener. When he and Andrea bought the property, the previous owner had already established a small vegetable garden with a few fruit trees. The couple has continued to maintain and expand the garden.
As their family grew (their children are now in their 30s), the Lapps installed an ever-changing landscape. Using granite scraps from local supply stores, they built raised beds to grow annual vegetables, including leafy greens, tomatoes, beets, onions, potatoes, sweet corn, squash, beans, melons and more.
The beds also host perennial crops such as asparagus, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. Raised beds help control soil compaction, drainage, water runoff and weeds, and they retain heat for a longer growing season. “We try to grow fruits and vegetables that don’t require pesticides,” Joe says. After he built the raised beds, he added granite walkways. “They were time-consuming to install, but I saved a lot of time by not having as many weeds to pull!” he laughs.
“We feast on strawberries, raspberries and leafy vegetables from our May garden; we love our berries,” Joe says. “We find the garden particularly welcoming at sunrise and sunset. The martins are very active!”
Martins are aerial insectivores, meaning they hunt and eat insects in the air, feeding on dragonflies, deer flies, horse flies and moths. “I set out to attract the birds to eat unwanted insects from my vegetable garden, since I don’t use pesticides,” Joe says. “Unfortunately, they feast on insects found 20 feet above the ground and not the mosquitoes and pests in my garden!”
Since retiring from his job as a secondary school math teacher 14 years ago, Joe has plenty of time to spend working his family’s homestead and caring for his colony of Purple martins — even though he only has his feathered guests for a few months of the year. Once arriving at their summer colony here in Raleigh, the birds begin to mate. By the first of June, breeding ends as the last of their fledges (they typically have three to four) leaves the nest.
In July and August, Purple martins move on to premigratory roost sites and prepare to head back to their wintering site in Brazil. That leaves the Lapps plenty of time to clean out the bird houses, tend to the garden and prep for their visitors anew.
“We are fortunate our neighbors love the martins too,” says Joe. “They especially love the morning and evening concerts from these songbirds.”
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.
