It is 6:30 A.M. in late April: a strange assortment of liquid chirps, chortles, and muffled yodels threads the dimness about to be burnished. In a nearby yaupon, a cardinal hammers mellow chinks into the still-black earth. Overhead, Purple Martins lance dawn-expressing their invisible presence through these baubles ofsound that hang, as do the minstrels, in the dew-rich air. Some older birds have been around Austin, Texas, for six weeks or more; others are hauling toward them and their dawn song. This chorus will continue as martins chortle for mates and new members for their colonies. Is their voice a sheer fling, an upwell of life at its pinnacle of encounter and renewal, as a poet would opine? Perhaps these birds call in the manner of watery leviathan whales, which also seek kinship and solidarity. For the Purple Martin itches to associate-with others of its kind, with humans who proffer houses and roosts, with additional migrant and resident bug-eating swallows-over great distances. Geography neither restricts nor contains this species. A site will last for eight to twelve weeks; a region is a neighborhood for a season; a migratory corridor is a huge plume of fellows chasing one another for hundreds and hundreds of miles, sliding high and low, stretching wires or bending tree limbs from one season to the next; and a range is where martins begin and end in the Western Hemisphere-scouting the southern reaches of Brazil's lowlands in December and the northern edge of human habitations on Canada's Great Shield in June.

This book is about a special relationship-the regard, affection, and understanding we have increasingly come to express about a bird that responds more and more to our concern for its survival. The Purple Martin is a wild bird that thrives around human habitations and, like other swallows, has responded to land clearance and settlement by adjusting to farms, towns, and even cities. This bird shows an unusual tameness in selecting and occupying compartments or "houses" in which to build its nest and is unique among avians in relying on human-made accommodations in which it nests throughout the core of its range. We treat the martin as both tenant and friend. We guard nest colonies and derive pleasure and satisfaction from watching birds prosper and numbers grow. We find martins companionable, useful, and ebullient. In the United States, they are harbingers of glad tidings-the shift of the season-from winter cold to the life-giving warmth of spring.

Martins pick us out. Increasingly seeking, if we believe oldtimers, our hubbub on which they cast their own. It must be the foods that farmers furnish: a suite of insects from crops and fence lines, water from rivers and lakes to slake their thirst and dab on parasites, and, of course, nest gourds and houses. Like Rome's famous geese, they repay us with a wall of sound, startling in its sharp, hard edge for danger; mellow in round dulcet chords, like a troubadour's song of nostalgia and hope-longing for perfection. Under their umbrella I am safe. Cool dawn heralds the sun so that their bustle, like mine, will busy us both. Domesticity is their chore: adventure awaits me when I observe them. I can fly in my imagination, be patient in my cycle, and watch theirs-this year and the next.