Purple Martin Forum

There is a lot of great advice that we've all seen on these forums; proper housing placement, S&S control, using a combination of gourds and houses, dawnsong, etc. One item that I'm convinced is important (and is often overlooked) is the importance to leave your empty housing up through the end ...

Awesome news, Tony! There are a whole lot of folks on this forum that are (almost) as happy as you! That ASY pair may have had some misfortune in losing their nest site to a tornado, but they could not have found a more committed landlord to stay with in the future.

Matt, I'm not familiar with the type of house that you are describing, but I'm always on the lookout for options when it comes to dealing with the sparrow threat. We have been fortunate to not lose a brood since adopting the slot-type entrances and sparrow spookers for our Bluebirds. Of course, we a...

Matt, Bluebirds are territorial. Your male bluebird "owns" your little corner of the world and he's not about to abandon it. He will continue to search for a new mate and try to nest with her. She, however, will chose the location within his territory to nest in. My wife and I went through...

We had bluebirds for years while trying to attract martins. Finally last year we got our first martins to move in. The bluebird house is about 75' from the marin house and the bluebirds would perch on the martin house frequently. But when the time came and the martins wanted to move in, they didn't ...

After years of trying, we finally found success this past season. Five martins all showed up and moved in on the same day (an amazing Saturday for us). We initially had two nesting pair and one lone male - all 2nd year birds. The lone male dried desperately to lure another female into his gourd for ...

I purchased the completed S&S controller (birdhouse-style repeating trap) from PMCA. A little pricey to have someone else build the trap, but worth every penny for me. The house went up in December and I have already dispatched one HOSP and two Starlings (and it's very early here in North Caroli...

Thanks for the info both! Gotta love this forum! I'm also thinking about changing out the crescent entrances on my Lonestar housing. I'm concerned about wing entrapment. All of the doors currently are crescent entrances. Is there another entrance type available? I have the round hole doors in storag...

I've read through past posts on this forum and purchased some 3/32" galvanized cable to upgrade my Lonestar system for safety (mine and the birds). The problem is that the spool on the Lonestar winch will not accomodate the 27 feet of the thicker cable. So, I'm now looking to also replace the w...

Some of our neighbors use pine needles for mulch. My wife and I enjoy watching our martins pilfer the pine needles from their mulch piles to use as nesting material

Dorn,

I guess you're right. I re-read the post and she does acknowledge the birds as migratory. I read it too fast the first time.

I can understand the issues for those running the memorial. Do they understand that these are migratory birds and that the roost is temporary? Perhaps they would not be so quick to disperse the birds if they knew that they will eventually leave on their own and that the roosting only occurs over a m...

Some interesting thoughts in this thread regarding the effects of heat versus available food. I noticed that the parents at my housing stopped feeding when the temps got up over 103 to 104 - but we were fortunate that only occurred for a few hours each day and there is plenty of food here, so the ba...

Penny - I would like to send you a small donation. Do you have a Paypal account? Otherwise, I could mail a check but I don't use checks too often anymore...

I guess adding shade may be my only option. These are individual gourds. One plastic super gourd with 2 chicks at 24 days, one natural gourd with 5 chicks at 24 days, and one natural gourd with 3 chicks at 15 days. I'm not sure what you mean by plug & string. Are you saying to plug the entrance ...

I know we've had several posts recently about the heat with some good ideas about how to help martins. We're expecting temps up to 103 or 104 through the weekend. We have two gourds with chicks at around 24 days old. I want to help them through the heat, but I also don't want to disturb them and cau...

It took me five years of playing the dawnsong / daytime chatter to get martins at my site - with few visitors during those years. Now that I have a few nesting pair (my first year with martins), I've stopped with playing the martin music. We get tons of visitors now. Our resident martins do a far be...

Nothing wrong with Tree Swallows - you can put up another bluebird house and have the Bluebirds and Swallows live in close proximity to one another. I've seen recommendations to have the two houses within 10 or 20 yards of each other, but facing opposite directions. We have Bluebirds and Martins at ...

During our weekend nest check, we found some newly-hatched babies (1 day old according to the PMCA size chart). This is our first year of attracting martins and we have a total of 14 eggs!!! I couldn't get an accurate count of the hatched eggs because one of the females refused to leave the nest and...

I had two martin decoys on my housing and the top decoy always seemed to draw the ire of visiting martins or my resident bluebirds. This was the decoy placed on top of the roof of my housing. The lower decoy never drew the same attention. It was not until after removing the upper decoy (after years ...