Purple Martin Forum

How high are the gourds?

Ten feet is high enough, but honestly the higher the better.

1/4 teaspoon of 5% Sevin dust (eBay) on the nesting material and tap it down with a spoon.

If all mites aren’t gone in a couple of days repeat.

It really doesn’t take much to be effective.

That pole looks fine.

Very sorry to hear this. Just terrible.. 1/8 to 1/4 tsp sevin dust “under” the nest works great to keep mites down. And if put under the nests the martins never come in direct contact with it so it’s safe, when used this way. It works great. Haven’t had any jumpers or mites since using it this mann...

If you search on Google you can still buy the 5% Sevin dust, for now.

My thought when I saw them was the heat of the metal versus a plastic gourd.

But if the guys in South Louisiana can use them and not have jumpers it must not be an issue.

Here the power company uses contract helicopters to spray their right of way to kill weeds and trees.

Is it possible that something like this could have occurred when you were away one day???

If you search through Google a barred owl nest box uses a 3&1/2” entrance.

Once Martins lay eggs they will stay until the owls kill them all one by one. It happens but it takes time.

I am as surprised as the landlord that the Martins abandoned the eggs and site, especially after being there for years.

Unfortunately building a cage around your housing from wire with 2”X4” holes is the only way to stop the great horned or hoot owl from taking your Martins. i bought a 100’ roll of 5’ wire and added it to the housing with an open space of a foot between the cage and the gourds and he can’t touch the ...

If you need another opinion, that won’t work.

1/4 of a teaspoon of Sevin dust in each compartment will kill any insects in there, pretty easy fix.

Cages will help with the hawk attacks. He basically hunts in an ambush mode. When the wire (2”X4”) of the cage stops him the Martins will escape out of the other side. I added cages to my racks last year to deter owls landing on the perches and beating the gourds with their wings to flush martins at...

Raccoon will do that.

Owl will pluck the wing and tail feathers one by one and drop them to the ground. Usually an owl will go to tha same tree to do this.

Game camera ($40) from Academy will tell you the answer.

Spiderman, you prefer the horizontals over the verticals? HOSPS don't like gourds? A friend recommended horizontals and they seemed to work, never bought any vertical gourds. In the houses I had problems with sparrows in the horizontal gourds I don’t, can't really explain why. Also it fixed the pro...

That’s how I ended up with 82 Troyer horizontals, it’s just what they prefer.

Over the years I started out with wooden houses then metal houses but when I started using gourds they were always occupied first.

Also I didn’t have any problems with sparrows like in the houses.

Nice looking nest Brent! They’ve been busy bringing in lots of nesting material! Last season I had one pair that brought in soooo many brown live oak leaves I had a hard time doing nest checks at first… Every time I moved leaves to the side more would fall back on top.. Thought there were 3 eggs at...

Don’t have any Sy’s here yet, but in past years it seemed that ASY males would pair with Sy females no problem.

By the time the Sy’s arrive the ASY females that are here have already paired up with another ASY male. So at that point any female will do.

I’ve seen time after time the Coopers Hawk will always fly past the doves on the ground at the feeder to pursue the Martins already in the air and fleeing.

As far as starlings after killing many of them I caught here I can see why the hawks don’t want to mess with them, they are bad dudes.