Dean Kildoo of North Liberty peers into a house for purple martins recently at his home just outside Slippery Rock. The multi-dwelling setups can be cranked down to ground level for easier inspection. Kildoo changes the nests for the birds several times to eliminate the blowflies that could harm the young birds.

Butler County is filled with a variety of people doing interesting things. This weekly feature offers snapshots of some of them by asking five questions. The latest installment appears below.

The air around Dean Kildoo's home in North Liberty is filled with swooping, soaring, diving purple martins, North America's largest swallow. That's because for 40 years the 88-year-old Kildoo has been building and maintaining purple martin houses and hanging dried and artificial gourds for the cavity-nesting birds to use. This year he estimates he has 87 pairs of nesting purple martins plus 324 eggs and 71 young birds. He took a few minutes from checking his nest boxes and hatchlings for blowfly infestations to answer five questions.

QUESTION: How did you get interested in purple martins?

ANSWER: George English had the Evening Star Motel on Route 108 outside of Slippery Rock. I wired the motel for him. He put up a martin house. That got me interested. He gave me the plans for the houses. I built two of them.

QUESTION: What is the purple martin season?

ANSWER: This year by March 28 I had six birds. They come from Brazil. They laid the first egg on May 1 this year. About the first of August, they start to leave. A lot of them go up to Presque Isle in Erie before they fly to Brazil.

QUESTION: How do you check purple martins after they've nested?ANSWER: After they start laying, I take the nests down every five days and make a record of how many eggs are in each room and the gourds. After the young are 8 days old, I take the house down, put the young in a bucket, throw the old nest out and put in a new one. The old nest gets a lot of them old blowflies in them that suck the blood from the bellies of the birds. I do the same when they are 20 days old, but you can't do it after that or they may fly away.QUESTION: What do purple martins eat?ANSWER: They eat insects, they get a lot of dragonfies from the lake. In April when it is cold and wet, I scramble them eggs and put them in the feeder and I use the egg shells for grit, like a chicken. I also buy mealworms. This year I used four dozen eggs and 6,000 mealworms.QUESTION: How much work is it?ANSWER: I built all my wooden houses and raised some of my gourds. I have six plastic gourds. There's a lot of work to it, but I like it. I don't have many mosquitoes either.

Kildoo places baby purple martins in a holding container so he can change their nesting materials at the purple martin sanctuary at his home in North Liberty.