The bird of the week is a purple martin. The largest of North America’s swallows, this glossy blue black martin is a casual visitor to the Vineyard, and then only in very small numbers. The Vineyard has not been able to lure the purple martins into staying and breeding on the Vineyard for the past 24 years. This seems strange to folks further south as practically all you have to do is put up a gourd or two and the martin will nest right next to your house or busy street.

What is going on? This week I’ve received reports of spring migrants arriving on the Island well ahead of schedule. It is amazing after a relatively harsh winter. I hate to mention global warming, but it seems the movement of birds, flowering of plants, hatching of insects and frog choruses are starting earlier.

Ospreys or fish hawks used to be very common along the shores of the mainland. Matter of fact, I recently heard that Buzzard’s Bay was so named due to the large number of ospreys found there. It appears that the less ornithologically inclined colonialists called ospreys buzzards in the 1600s. Probably several thousand ospreys summered along the south coast of Massachusetts when the first settlers arrived. The Birds of Massachusetts (Veit and Petersen) states that there were one thousand pair counted along the shore from Connecticut and Long Island to the Cape and Islands in 1940.

It was a whirlwind getting ready to leave. On the way to pick up Pat Hughes and Hal Minis, we met Merrily Tuck and her husband, Tickles, for lunch in Ft. Lauderdale. Pat and Hal came in from Puerto Rico where they had been visiting Pat’s father, John Hughes, and combined a bit of birding and swimming with a good dose of golf. Between packing we took Pat and Hal “out west” ­— which, on Florida’s east coast, means west of Interstate 95 — for an introduction to Florida birding.

My parents used to call such visitors “visiting firemen.” The guests could only stay for a day, not an overnight, so you tried to give them the best overview of the Island in a short time. The 50-cent tour as it is called. I find the same is true when I am in Florida. Recently I had back-to-back visiting firemen and had an excuse to put aside the bloody income tax preparation and go birding!

It is that time of year again — a season when I truly become a bird-watcher with disambiguation (split personality). One of my alter egos is excited by the return of red-winged blackbirds, common grackles, and to a considerably lesser degree brown-headed cowbirds, to the Vineyard. The red-winged blackbird males are perched on high grasses in the fields and marshes of the Island singing their hearts out, waiting for the females to return and hopefully choose them as a mate. Waterfowl are beginning to pair off and build nests.