Purple Martin Forum

Thanks for your comments I appreciate your input.

I know that you can use heart meat for supplemental feeding but I wonder if you can use beef kidneys, no fat and good protein?

Hi Rob, when you think your Martin’s are hungry enough you might try this, get a long pole and tape a Dixie cup to it. I use a collapsible golf ball retriever and put a Dixie cup in the hole and you can use that pole to place some crickets or mealworms which I use mostly on the perches ,that’ll some...

I like your aggressiveness that extra effort is what makes it all pay off, keep up the good work
Ed.

Are you able to plug the nest up at night while the male or female are in the nest.? Maybe a Dixie cup on a long pole or something of that nature.

Hi Whippy, good to hear that your birds are doing well, our birds are doing fairly good this year a little on the slow side we're still waiting for our first subs to return should be within the next week. I don't know if you have red pine trees in Texas the needles are extremely good for laying on t...

Don’t be too surprised if your Treeswallow has a change of heart when your PM brings a female around. I break up that relation ship before it causes you a lot of problems. Just my thoughts
Ed

My original Poles go back to the early 70s they were 4 inch round heavy pipe of course there was no T 14‘s then but I mounted the T 14 s on the same poles and they are holding up very well still.The outside of the width measure 9 inches on mine I used planned rough-cut so that the inside is about 7 ...

Yes these pipes are a full 5 in.very heavy walled I don’t know exactly how heavy yet. I wonder if it would be any advantage in going to a 2 x 8 or ripping it even to a 2 x 7. The main things are they have to be very safe because there will be a large amount of people around them.
Ed

Thanks flyin-lowe for getting back to me on Easter Sunday, what you have showed me jars my memory and that’s pretty much the way I did most of mine ,I was just a little worried because that pole was that big , but I think it will work fine I’ll let you know later on what happens thanks again . Happy...

I may have a chance to install 4 T-14’s for in a public site, my question is has anyone ever mounted them on a 5 “ square steel pole? I have built and installed in the past several T-14’s but not in quite a while and not too as big of a pole as 5 inches I have mounted some of mine on a 4 inch round ...

Hi Brent, let me start off by saying I hope there isn’t anybody on this forum that thinks because of their geographical location makes them less sympathetic of landlords losing their martins through starvation. Teaching martins supplemental feeding is not easy, not every Martin Will do it even when ...

Bill, as long as you have some more Cadis flies left why don't you try to work them into a tray if they recognize them sitting on a perch and then work them into a tray if you get them going that way they won't be using all that energy on cold-weather when you toss them.I fed my birds this morning a...

Good to hear from you again gobbler it’s been quite a long time I wondered what happened to you. Sounds like you’re going to get birds this year good luck to you.Ed.

Dave if you have a round pole and wanted to try something to Strengthen it ,not knowing what size and shape you have is hard to answer but what I would do is take the next size bigger and put it on the outside of your original pole or if your original pole is maybe 2 inch diameter then put the next ...

In two different occasion
many years apart both first nests were started by ASY‘s
Ed

I have a late nest, ASYM and SYF that have three youngsters two of which fledged today the 14th and I am expecting the last one to fledge tomorrow or the next day. It's neat to watch the parents feed the two outside the nest sometimes in a tree sometimes in flight and then go back and feed the singl...

Just a reminder don't forget to put that vanilla in the cotton balls for those real late Nests ,this is blackfly season coming up. Just yesterday I had three Nests with brand new pinkies in them and supposed to have more eggs hatching today, those blackflies can kill them very rapidly while they're ...

Hi Dave and thank you for responding to my thread. I also am thinking and hoping that this situation is extremely rare, however these guards are brand new and the traction devices I think have not been out all that long ,so that's the reason for my interest . This morning I did get a chance to go ba...

I recently this spring bought some new Troyer horizontal guards for one of my satellite colonies (Vikings lodge). I just stop by to raise the guards back up because of high winds two days before and I'm very glad I did. There was an ASY female hanging by 1 foot upside down flapping frantically tryin...