Brentwood resident John Miller is known as the driving force behind attracting flocks of purple martins to Forest Park, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Cahokia Mounds, Creve Coeur Lake Park and the parking lot of O’Connell’s, in south St. Louis, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Miller, 61, starts visiting Forest Park
when the martins start arriving from Brazil, where they spend the winter. He supplies shelter for what is believed to be the largest urban population of purple martins in North America. He says the martins’ survival is “totally dependent on humans for housing.”
Miller helped maintain the martin homes in his grandfather’s back yard as a kid in Kentucky, and restarted the hobby in Forest Park when he moved to St. Louis in 2005.
Read the full article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.