 The annual Purple Martin Fest was back in Bemidji for the second year in a row to celebrate the bird-friendly community. Reporter Cheryl Moore tells us about our friendly flying neighbors in this week's community spotlight. The Bemidji community has a unique opportunity to help our friends that fly in the sky. And as an official Minnesota bird city, it's safe to say the community takes that responsibility very seriously. This is all sort of an approach to making not only the public aware of all the birding opportunities and how bird-friendly Bemidji is, but it's also an opportunity for us to promote that. I mean, we have a lot of birds. I mean, you're just standing here. I can hear like seven or eight, ten different species just in the last few seconds. The annual Purple Martin Fest is always held around the same time as International Migratory Bird Day. It took a brief hiatus but came back to highlight the bird-friendly community as well as bring awareness. The group has held what's called Purple Martin Fest a few different times over the years. They held it about four or five years in a row up until about 2015 and then people got busy, a few people moved and it hasn't been held since and I thought this is a good opportunity. Our Purple Martin population here is really growing. The festival is named after the bird that chooses to make Bemidji their home during summer. Right now, all Bemidji's Purple Martin houses at Cameron Park and around Bemidji State University are at full capacity. That's equal to around 300 pairs of Purple Martins, which may sound like a lot to take care of. As humans, it's important to remember our role in making sure all the birds are out of harm's way. We see a lot of things like window strikes, so the birds hit a lot of windows. So we try to minimize that, put something that's, if you have a big picture window, maybe putting some Scotch tape or something that lets the bird know that it's not the forest on the other side. They often mistake it for the trees that they can see in the reflection. Things like keeping cats indoors is another thing we can do. Another fact about Purple Martins is that when they leave here in the summer, they'll be migrating to places all over the world like Brazil. That's why it's important to be a good host city and admire them while you can before they head to their next destination. It's been a great opportunity to do work with a species that is a colony nester, so they're really obvious, really abundant. They're really gregarious, so they're actually pretty easy to work with from a people standpoint. They don't get stressed by people too much. They're a lot of fun and they come back. They're pretty. They make a nice sound. They eat bugs. You know, they're sort of a great all-around bird. Reporting in Bemidji with this week's Community Spotlight, Cheryl Moore, Lakeland News. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.