Purple Martin Forum

Wow...reading this post has been an eye-opener! I haven't had the experience of Hawk attacks...just little ol' starlings (which are driving me nuts). Good luck! Hope you have a successful season!

We have gourds (Troyer, I think). We also have the little door traps, that I think will work as soon as I can pinpoint where a starling is starting a nest. So far, it doesn't look like the starlings are going in...we still have at least one that is roosting above chasing martins away. Mostly we have...

I guess getting the starling from the trap to the bucket is the scariest thing to me, but I can wrap my arm in a towel and wear my heavy duty gloves. Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, I must report our first deadly attack of the season. This afternoon, I brought down the gourds for a nest check an...

Kathy...one more question...If I am successful in trapping the starling...how do you handle it? I've become pretty fearless and quite proficient at disposing of HOSPs. Starlings scare me. How do you get it out of the gourd once youv'e got it trapped?

Thanks so much, Kathy. I'll keep posting as the season progresses.
Good luck with the draught situation. We are in an on-going draught here in Texas (although February has been unusually wet). It can get pretty tough as we get into summer. 2011 was the worst!!

Thank you, Kathy. Actually I have had the SREHs on all my gourds for a number of years. My experience is that some starlings always get through. (Maybe they are the smaller ones.) Once they start a nest in a gourd, they tend to continue going into the same one even tho' I continue to pull out the ne...

Trapped and disposed of 6 HOSPs today. There's probably 8-10 more hanging around the gourds. I've closed the traps for the rest of the day because of our very high winds today. I don't want to have trapped birds out there if the weather gets really nasty. The starlings are another matter altogether....

The beautiful martins are definitely coming in :grin: , but along with them have come a slew of HOSPs and Starlings :evil: The trap for HOSPs is in full operation...don't really know what I can do about the starlings except pull out their nestings. The battle has begun...hopefully the martins will c...

We had our 1st sighting on the 19th. Our gourds have been inundated with sparrows, so I have plugged all the entrances. But, this evening, I heard the song and witnessed several martins circling in the sky, so I opened 6 of my 18 units. As I sat on the patio and watched, martins went into 3 of the u...

I thought I'd report on my two jumpers. They were still on my patio this morning, so I went off to our local Petco and got some crickets. When I tried to approach them, they both hopped off in a panic. Since they are somewhat mobile, I thought I would leave some crickets in the water dish and maybe ...

Thank you for the quick reply. The water in about 1/4" deep in a small tupperware lid, They're just pecking at it...no drowning. I'll keep you posted.

I am kind of late to this party. But I have a couple of young ones on the ground. We put water out and they are hopping in and drinking. I read about feeding crickets. Are crickets readily available at particular stores? Do I let the "jumpers" hang out on the shaded patio, or do I need to ...

Those are great pictures...very helpful. We had more jumper last year. Just this one so far this year and they are just about all fledged, now. Our little one was on the patio this morning, but soon was able to fly off. I think it made it to the colony. Thank you for that great tutorial.

I didn't get the link. The young one is now on our patio.

Thank you for your input. Most of our nests have fledged and this on looks like it had fledged, but got injured. At any rate, finding the proper nest is probably not possible. I'm hoping it will be healed by tomorrow morning. If not I'll try the crickets. Thanks!

We found one of the babies from our colony on the ground yesterday. It has been hopping around and flying a little to low branches, etc. If we put it in a box for safety, what do we feed it? Does anyone have experience with actually saving and rehabbing a martin in such circumstances? We could use s...

Last year we had 16 out of 18 compartments nested. One we gave up on because of a very persistent starling. I finally closed up the entrance. This year we completely re-confirgured our set up. We replaced our metal housing units with all gords. I don't expect as many this year just because of the ch...

I started seeing eggs on 4/17. Two out of eighteen gords showing 6 eggs in all. They are really hiding the eggs well. I was really surprised to find 4 in one nest and hadn't noticed any before. So now I'm really digging in...gently, of course. Unfortunately on 4/21, I saw evidence that a 5 egg clutc...

Wow...ya'll get 'em early over in your neck-o-the-woods. Ours won't be back for 2-3 more weeks. Have a happy and productive season!

We have had our share of sparrow and starlings this year. We have trapped and killed many sparrows and two starlings. Even so, two of our compartments have been nested with eggs over and over again. We tear out the nests everytime we check (every day or two), have not seemed to be able to discourage...