Purple Martin Forum

It's too complicated to report now so I'm just going to keep records of my colony arrivals myself. I've been keeping records since 1975, so it's not that important to me to spend all this time trying to report to this site. There's enough people already doing it. I've requested my password to be sen...

I have tried to log on to report my scout sighting, but it won't accept my login password. I've tried ordering gourds and have not been able to log in. No one from this website will reply for my request for a new password. I don't know what the problem is.

Hey Steve, That's a lot of gourds!! I just ordered another 48 Troyer horizontals. All but 24 gourds are now updated. I have 90 Troyers and 24 Heath total. I still have the Coates housing too. I'm going to get the poles straightened up at the Keithville colony and do some repair to the housing the fi...

I spent most of the weekend doing an extensive nest check on all of the compartments in my colony. I have 114 gourds and 40 compartments of Coats houses. I have 67 nest with eggs, 3 nest with just hatched babies. It looks like about 30 nest are ready for eggs. So far I have 316 eggs and baby martins...

I'm going to try to change the rope this weekend because I don't want to take the chance of it breaking. Also, I'll be able to do nest checks.

Steve, I did a nest check last weekend. The houses are almost at capacity. There are several nest of babies from just hatched to 7 or 8 days old. There are 5 out of 8 gourds that are occupied. I couldn't check the middle units because the rope is frayed and I was afraid it would break. I don't know ...

The martins must have waiting to come in on the same day. Yesterday I only had 7, today there must be 30. It's still cloudy with some drizzle, but at least the temps are ok. I'm still way down on numbers. Normally by mid March I have around 70 to 80 martins. Hopefully most of the martins were wise a...

I've always bought mine from the bait shop. Gray crickets are what they are called and they are more "tender" than regular field crickets.

A couple of weeks ago I had a male flying over the houses, but he never landed and I never saw him again. This evening I watched a female for over an hour flying over head. She finally landed and went into a gourd. This time last year we had about 15, so they are very slow to arrive here. I'm still ...

I know I have a lot of people doubting my post about sparrows and starlings not nesting in my Heath gourds. All I'm saying is that I have never had them nest in MY gourds. I don't know why. Maybe because they sway in the wind more than normal. I read a long time ago that sparrows and starlings don't...

Mr. K. I did center the hole and it left a 1" step over at the bottom. All I had to do was to make a 6x6 tray out 1/4 in. plywood. I painted them with left over white exterior and added some plastic bumpers on the bottom to keep them a little bit off the floor. The trays have lasted for 3 years...

I too have Coats housing with the crescent holes. I have 5 of the 16 room towers and 2 of the 8 room houses. For the first 5 or 6 years I left them with the 6x6 rooms. I only had 4 or 5 pairs in each tower. I had a lot of martins laying eggs on the floor. They wouldn't build nest or the nest were so...

K C,

Thanks for the post. I'm going to do that next year.

Starlings and sparrows don't mess with the gourds. That's the main reason I like gourds because only the martins seem to be interested in the gourds. I did order 18 Troyer gourds this morning from PMAC.

I have 96 Heath gourds and I bought these these 5 or 6 years ago because they resemble natural gourds and because of the price. They cost much less than a Troyer or Extruder. I've been out to Steve Kroenke's place a few times and his site is nothing short of amazing. He has alot of Troyer and Extrud...

Kinda figured that it was going to be on the 30th. Mine usually show up on the 16th. I don't know why it takes 2 weeks for mine to make it the extra 45 miles. I'm not ready for them yet, so it will give me a little extra time.

The animals are seeing the infrared flash and probably hearing the click of the camera. Deer see it because it obviously gets their attention. I've gotten several pictures of owls, but like I mentioned, they fly off right away. I've been using these for the last two years and haven't had any attacks...

I have two game cameras set up. When an owl shows up, I get one picture of the owl landing, and right away it flies off. My cameras are set on 3 shot bursts and I think the infrared flash scares them off.

It seems like the Red Oak leaves are very popular in my colony. Last year I noticed very early on that they were excavating the pine straw, so I raked up a bunch of leaves and they really liked that. I think I'll go ahead and build the nests again, but I'm going to add leaves with the pine straw.

It seems like the purple martins kick out the pine straw and build nest with other nesting materials. The last two years I've been putting pine straw in the gourds and houses and it's not doing much good. I have 156 compartments and average 90 to 95 pairs a year, but my colony is not growing either....