Purple Martin Forum

Pretty sure it is a Dickcissel, based on the amount of yellow in the eyestripe and the reddish on the wings. Too much yellow for a Savannah Sparrow

Have you considered looking for another nearby location that is suitable - maybe a park or nature area? You can get the benefit of having martins and also making others aware. Also, my personal view is don't get hung up on avoiding any potential for having to confront the death of some martins. Look...

Hi Ken - Great report with great results. Sorry I won't be able to attend the Western Working Group meeting this year. Your weather parallels ours in Sacramento: a late start but then very mild weather through the nesting season.

Thanks, Steve. I read your previous post re: martin use of roads. We haven't ever seen anything like that here. Our birds frequently perch on the electrical wires for the light rail trains, and though they normally move when the trains come, the trains come every 10-15 minutes all day long, so it is...

The martin breeding season is nearly done here this year, so we have close-to-final population information. Since 2002, my colleague Dan Kopp and I have monitored 9-12 colonies that breed annually in elevated freeways and overpasses ("bridges") in urban Sacramento. This population is the l...

Whoops - sorry I forgot we met Mike. Advancing age, I guess. There are a lot of suitable overpasses around the state, but most are not occupied. We have never found an occupied one that has freeway traffic below it. The key to occupancy is a nearby source population. The Sacramento population has a ...

Hi Mike - Your colony is pretty exciting. We have been cheering on your neighbor Ken Buker since his colony got up and running. I'm not sure if Breeder1 wants to remain anonymous, but he and I have been in close touch in his monitoring of the birds breeding in the transmission towers in Tulare Count...

I'll jump in on Stan to offer my answer John's question. None of us western martin folks want to see martins precluded from using their historic snag nesting sites. But relying on natural cavities alone is a risky proposition for two reasons. First, snag nest sites may be diminishing in some areas d...

Just to clarify my basis for our survival estimate a bit. We have a small number of banded martins (30-45 per year) that we follow in a relatively small population (70-175 pairs over the last 6 years). We record the total number of "band checks" (check of a bird for bands that we make) and...

Here is a reply I prepared to a similar request several year ago. I am colleagues have been studying a color-banded martin population nesting in bridges in Sacramento, CA. We have looked at fidelity of martins to their previous nesting cavity and previous nesting colony. This is a report from a prev...

If you are trapping and have potential to catch skunks, elevating the trap (on a table, etc.) should prevent skunks from accessing the trap. Apparently they can't jump or climb very well. At the feral cat feeding stations around Sacramento (which I hate) they have signs saying that all cat food must...

Guru? Hardly! The video was taken by Corinna Elwood in Shelter Cove, Humboldt County, California in 2009. This area is where Cori conducted PMCA-sponsored monitoring of a large population that nests in utility poles, snags, and the new set of nest boxes that Stan Kostka installed. This work was repo...

Here is a link to an awesome set of photos of a Peregrine Falcon hunting within a large flock of aerial starlings.

> http://naturestoc.smugmug.com/Nature/Te ... 6655_Sn7cU

Although my observations come from a very different environment in urban Sacramento, they support yours, Steve. Here, after Starlings entered the state in the 1960s and eliminated martin nesting in trees and buildings, the martins persisted only in bridges. Since martins disappeared from buildings n...

I can offer some information on starling status in California, where I have done quite a bit of work on martins. Starlings arrived here as breeders in the early '60s and rapidly increased their population. Doe to suitable agricultural and residential habitat conditions, Starlings attain some of thei...

In Sacramento, CA we have been rehabbing young that have fallen from bridge nest sites because we do not have access to place them back into nests (which should be the first option for "rehabbing"). For several years we took an approach of trying to get rehabbed nestlings out to the coloni...

Hi Steve -

I certainly don't want you to give up any passion for your martins - not that I think you could! It's the passion for martins that keeps us, and them, going. Thanks for all your great work.

Steve - I know you understand population dynamics, but maybe it is worth noting that your loss of perhaps 100 fledglings, while seeming alarming, represents not more than 10% of the >1000 total number of young fledged from your site (based on one of your other posts). I bet this rate of predation is...

Hi John - Yes, Stan Kostka has had good success initiating a nest box program at Shelter Cove, Humboldt County, along the forested north coast region of California. We've had several recent articles on this PMCA-supported program in recent PM Update issues. Transition to nest boxes is easier in the ...

Martins are nearly done breeding here this year, so we have close-to-final population information. For those who don't know, I monitor 10-12 colonies that breed annually in elevated freeways and overpasses in urban Sacramento. This population is the last remnant of a once widespread population in th...