What) Neepawa is a town of 3,300 located on the Yellowhead Highway at the intersection with Highway 5. Neepawa is the self-proclaimed Lily capital of the world as well as the self-proclaimed Purple Martin Capital. It has also been named Manitoba's Most Beautiful Town more than any other community in the province. (1)

    The Purple Martin is the largest North American swallow. These aerial acrobats have speed and agility in flight, and when approaching their housing, will dive from the sky at great speeds with their wings tucked. The average length from bill to tail is 8 inches. Adult males are entirely black with glossy steel blue sheen. Adult females are dark on top with some steel blue sheen and lighter underparts.

    Purple Martins suffered a severe population crash in the 20th Century widely linked to the release and spread of European Starlings in North America.  Their population today is dependent on artificial martin houses of wood or aluminum and fake plastic gourds supplied by individuals and organizations fond of the bird. This tradition was in place even before the population crash. Native Americans are said to have hollowed out gourds and erected them for this purpose. The situation requires ongoing maintenance, as European Starlings and House Sparrows compete with martins as cavity-nesters, and will fight with martins over nest sites. Starlings have even been known to kill Purple Martins, especially nestling young, and Purple Martins have been known to evict House Sparrows from their nests. (2)

    Where) Beside Highway 16 just east of town

    Why) I hoped to see the Purple Martin air show but I thought that Pam would enjoy this one no matter what we ended up seeing.

Here is someone else's closeup of the bird that we were trying to spot. (3)

This is the colony that they were talking about but I could not tell ...

... whether these were Purple Martins living there or not.

I do know that there were a lot of birds coming and going but I have to admit that I became so distracted by ... 

... the beautiful patterns in the clouds that I stopped pretending to photograph the colony.

Take a look at the three cloud pictures I kept and ...

... let me know what you would have wanted to keep looking at.

If you would like to test your eyesight then see if you can count more than 8 black Martin specks in the previous three images.