Purple Martin Forum

My colony is about 500km SSW of Winnipeg in South Dakota. It took me nearly 10 years to get my colony started, but I had a very persistent tree swallow issue I did not address that I believe prevented my martin colony from getting started sooner. I played the dawn song CD sunup to sundown from ~May ...

I used the new Sevin formulation last season at my colony and had the worst mite infestation I've experienced at my site in a decade. Not sure if it was due to the year's weather or the new formulation. It was an extremely dry season at my site last year and would suspect a wet season would have mor...

I have connections to a small local diner that saves eggshells for me. When I pick up a batch from them, I rinse them and bake them in the oven at 225 degrees for 20 minutes before I crush them and put them in the freezer for storage until martin season arrives!

I begin to offer crushed eggshells and crushed oystershells at my colony when nest building begins. I offer these until the last nest at my colony has fledged. The martins seem to strongly prefer eggshells over oystershells at my site. If my trays become empty for a few days due to a strong windy sp...

I typically harvest a natural bounty of insects each summer and fall for the next year's supplemental feeding. In SD during late May and early June every third year there is a large hatch of June beetles that swarm my yard light each night for a few weeks. I'll spend an hour or so each evening befor...

I've always applied Sevin dust to each nest cavity at the beginning of the season when I pre-nest all cavities with pine needles. Nonetheless, later in the nesting season mites inevitably show up. I have a rather large colony where re-applying Sevin dust to each nest or completing nest changes is no...

FL = Dec. 27
TX = Jan 18

Each year until mid-Sept I have migrating martin stragglers stop by my colony as I keep my housing up until around the third week of Sept. in case any migrating martins are looking for a place to nest the following year. Many times a lone martin or two will stop by for a brief visit along with a gro...

I had a very late nest at my colony this year in South Dakota. An ASY female paired with a SY male.... likely a renesting attempt for the ASY female. She laid 3 eggs beginning on July 13 and 2/3 hatched on July 30. By Aug 18 all other late nests at my site had fledged their young and her SY male com...

Early nesting martins at my colony usually use lilac bush leaves as they are the first leaves available at my site. Later nests have green ash and elm leaves. There are a few cottonwood trees nearby, but have never seen a cottonwood leaf in a martin nest at my site. Last year was a cold and late spr...

Tree swallows are indeed a good addition in close proximity to an existing martin colony. I have 125 single-unit nest boxes and gourds around the perimeter of my 40-ac property, 10 of which are within 90 feet of my martin housing. I usually have about 100 tree swallow nests each year. Between the tr...

CC Martins, my site is very open in all directions and all 15 house/gourd units are the same height (10-13') above ground level. The first early arriving birds at my site usually initially occupy the top 1 or 2 floors of my wooden houses, but as a few more dozen martins arrive they inhabit all 4 lev...

I've had nests in the past with 11 and 10 eggs. For the 11-egg nest, none hatched whereas the 10-egg nest 4 hatched. My assumption is that a second pair (or at least a second female) took over these nests perhaps due to the original female of the nest dying and the developing embryos in the incubati...

I have a large colony (150+ pairs) and band 150 young each year. Over the past few years I've had about 10 nesting pairs where both individuals of the pair were banded. The following year the banded individuals that returned never paired again with the same banded mate. I have 15 different house/gou...

I had some luck trapping and shooting HOSP this weekend....3 males and 2 females....still have a few pairs to remove as I only have 2 traps and about 7 HOSP nests in some of my 120 tree swallow houses. When I catch a sparrow in a nest box that has a started HOSP nest, I terminate the sparrow and pla...

I checked my tree swallow houses yesterday and found a nearly complete sparrow nest in one of the nest boxes. When I pulled the sparrow nest out of the box there was a partially built tree swallow nest underneath with a dead female swallow in the nest. Her head was partly defeathered with dried bloo...

It is still pretty early for returning adult martins in the northern parts of their nesting range. I've had years when there were fewer than 10 adult martins at my well established site until the 1st of May. After that date dozens of new arrivals would show up at my colony each day. Around the 21st ...

Moving a gourd or house with eggs or young even to the other side of your yard would likely result in the abandonment of the gourd or house by the parents, and eggs would never hatch and the nestlings would die due to starvation. Even if the young in a gourd or house you'd move miles away from the o...

Welcome back to the Forum! The martins that are currently finding their way to your latitude are 5 year-old birds or older, which are typically the first of the season to arrive in respective areas. Most of the early returning martins likely are headed to the colony they were at in previous years. A...

I had 2 ASY males show up on April 6 with strong south winds and temps in the 60's. Fast forward to the morning of April 8 with an inch of snow and temps around 30. I now have 4 ASY males at my site. Tried flipping grasshoppers and crickets I collected last fall on the evening of the 7th and one rea...