Purple Martin Forum

Up until a couple of days ago, we had a couple dozen martins visiting our houses. I assume some of them were our HY martins as they seemed to act like they owned the place. Since we had more visiting than we did during nesting, I can only assume the rest are just passing through. I hope this bodes w...

I live up in Minnesota, and our season is just winding down. We had 2 SY pairs that laid 5 eggs each. All 10 of our babies fledged at the end of July/beginning of August.

A few of them have been returning to the nest at night a couple of days ago, but we haven't seen them since then.

Carol

We still have at least 8 of ours returning every night and going into the various compartments that are available. They all fledged at the end of July but they have returned every night so far. I expect they will leave in the next couple of days for one of the roosts in Minnesota. I've read that the...

Yes, I've seen my SY parents feed their chicks egg shells as well. I've even found a bunch of them in the nests. They are actually getting them off of our patio (on the ground). One year we put out egg shells in a tray feeder and hung it from one of our hooks on our bird feeder pole. We didn't have ...

Thanks Louise, It's been pretty calm, and the nestlings close to fledging. We had one go this morning, and the other 10 are set to go over the next week. When we did the last nest check a week ago, they all looked fat, healthy and happy. Hopefully they will stay that way. It is supposed be around 80...

This is the first in since 2009 that we've had Purple Martins nesting at our site. We've had 6 SY purple martins hanging around but only 4 of them paired up. They each laid 5 eggs, and all 5 hatched. They are all just about to fledge. (Keeping fingers crossed.) My question is actually regarding bugs...

I think what really attracted attention this year was the new pole with 12 gourds on it. That seemed to attract a lot more interest this year than just the aluminum house we've had in the past. With all the purple martins we saw towards the end right before our nestling fledged, we are hoping to hav...

This is our first successful year for fledging purple martins, but our 6th year in trying to attract martins. We were able to attract a pair of SY martins 4 years ago, but all the babies died after 6 days from a large blow fly larvea infestation. :-( We attracted a pair of SY martins two years ago b...