SREH VS Round Holes

[frushaj]

Last year was my first as a PM landlord. I have lived other places with PM, but was never an active landlord. The 9 rooms round hole house is in a bad place with close trees on the backside so I plugged the holes to keep out the Starlings and Sparrows. Had to trap several sparrows and shoot a few Starlings. I had one pair with 4 eggs 3 fledged last year. I set up a new 14-room house with SREH but it was late in the season last year and did not get any takers. I thought it may be to close to some trees so I moved it closer to the house in a more open area. I put out decoys and had the dawn song playing for 2 hours each morning this year. A single male returned to the older house this year and was very active in trying to attract other Martins without success. Some Martins would come to the new house circle but never land. I decided to experiment so I called the company and had them send me one door with the round holes for the front four compartments. Within 15 minutes of switching doors there were two Martins checking it out and landed on top. The next morning they were checking out the rooms with the round holes but not the SREH. They recruited the male from the old house and now all three are in the new house, but only in the front side with the round holes. I think for new landlords they should have some of each, round holes and SREH to make it as attractive as possible. A trap and a good pellet gun will help with the sparrows and Starlings.

[joeincan]

Very interesting. I have SREH openings and never had a problem. If I were a martin I would prefer round holes, but over time with more people converting the offspring will identify with SREH openings. Go with whatever works for you. Good Luck!

[Allan Day]

I tried for 3 yrs with SREH, plastic gourds.

Switched to natural gourds with round holes and decoys, gottem immediately.

I've just expanded to sixty gourds this year, I had twenty pair last year. Once I'm at 90% occupancy in a couple of years, I plan on switching to SREH after they've laid their eggs.

There are two things I've learned with certainty

1)Round holes attract more birds, faster.

2) SREH are much safer for the birds

But, more important than anything is Management! Trap, shoot, and dust with Sevin.

[Guest]

Allan,
Just be observant when switching to SREH.
3 (?) years ago I had a female that I switched the compartment to SREH after she was incubating- (while she was out eating) and she refused to go in. She tried and tried and I gave up after getting worried at the amount of time she was taking. She called and fretted the whole time and eventually I lowered the house, switched the openings and she zipped in before I had the house up all the way.
Just some info to watch out for. Would she have figured it out and navigated the SREH eventually...I'll never know.
All I know is that I got an ulcer watching for the time it was taking.
Must have been at least 15 minutes

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

My son started a 24gourd colony 3 years ago at his new house, and he got 19 pair the first year, all of the gourds were SREH. His housing was full last year. He has an excellent location, wide open, no nearby trees.

This year my daughter put up a gourd rack, 8 gourds, all SREH, and she has martins in 4 of the gourds already. She has an excellent location, its wide open on 3 sides, there is one skimpy tree about 60 ft away on one side.

You don't need round holes to start a colony. Too many martins, eggs, and babies are destroyed by starlings. They can come in and do so much damage in 15 minutes. Why take the chance with round holes? Why not gradually change over now, before they lay eggs? I would add one SREH every day and see what happens. As long as none leave, you can keep changing.

[Allan Day]

Susan,

I'll be careful, I offered 18 round and 18 SREH last year. I understand your concern, I filled up almost all my round and no birds could figure out the SREH. I guess there was other housing available with round holes.

I switched everything back to round and had a few more pair with numerous singles.

Like I said, SREH are safer and I plan on switching when I hit my goal.

[Ed Gutshall]

John
This is interesting. I started my colony with round hole natural gourds. The 2nd yr. I made some into adjustable cresents. This worked out great. As they laid eggs etc. I adjusted them down and by the end of the year the birds were doing fine with them. The next year I put up half and half. Next year I put up all cresants non adjustable. I have had this set up for years with great results. Here is the kicker--I decided to put up another setup on the other side of the house about 100 yards away. The first year I put up a 12 room metal house. Two pair of SY took to it the first year. Six pair the 2nd. year. Time to change to Cresants--right? I bought a nice 12 gourd setup with plastic gourds with cresants. When the ASY birds returned they could not get in them. I decided I would just let them struggle as martins generally do when they first encounter cresants. They struggled for two weeks and finally abandoned that setup and went to my old setup with natural gourds. There were so many martins at my old setup that there were not enough gourds to go around--talk about fighting!
Those birds never went back to that new setup. After a couple of weeks had gone by, I rushed to put the metal house with round holes back up . It was only when some 2nd. year birds finally came that the colony was re-established. No ASY birds stayed in that house that year.
The plastic gourds were to perfect spec when I received them. I actually filed them out slightly to match what I have on my natural gourds. I have a templet that I use for sizing the holes. I have never had a starling enter a resistant cresant.
Last year I had pairs in 5 round holes in the house and four pair in 4 round hold gourds hanging under the house. This year I will change some of the holes back to cresants--but not all of them!!

Ed

[Brad-AL]

I started my colony with all SREH. I got 4 pair the first year and 3 years later had over 100 pair. I sure don't think my colony would have grown any faster had I used round holes. At the time I started my colony there were basically no SREH in use in my area. My colony is now starting it's 6th season and I estimate I have about 50 birds back now. A neighbor up the road 1/2 mile has had Martins for at least 20 years. He uses natural gourds with round holes. He had 4 Martins circling his gourd racks this morning when I went to work. My gourds are a mix of naturals and Naturelines. All have tunnels, which in my opinion is a big, big plus.

I did a little experiment at a friend of mines round holed gourd supercolony a few years back. I fixed him 20 natural gourds, 17 of them had crescent holes cut directly into the gourds with porches beneath and 3 had WDC tunnels. 19 of the 20 gourds I took him were fledged young the first year for a 95% occupancy rate. His round holed natural gourds had a little less than 75% occupancy rate that year. He now uses only porched SREH gourds at his colony.

I have helped start several colonies in my area. All have been started using SREH gourds. Unless Starlings go extinct, I will never use or recommend anyone using a round holed gourd. I expect if that ever happens I will still use tunnels.

[Steve Kroenke]

I have a super martin colony with all round holes and starlings are almost a non-problem. A few show up and they are shot or trapped. Since I have had my colony in northwest Louisiana, not a single starling has destroyed any martin eggs or nestlings or harmed any martin.

Bob, my neighbor, formerly used all crescents in his super martin colony. He has now converted all of them to round holes and not a single starling has hurt any martins.

Our martins prefer round holes, can easily enter them, never get entrapped, and quickly zip in when Accipiter hawks and merlins are attacking.

I use an effective program of off season trapping and shooting when necessary and this works great to eliminate the starling threat. I usually shoot 5 or 6 inquisitive starlings each martin season. I haven't shot any so far in 2009.

Every situation is different relative to starling competition dynamics and what is happening in one location does not automatically happen somewhere else. When I lived in the Tallahassee, Florida area, I had zero starling problems at my last two my martin colonies from around 1976 till I moved in 2004 to Louisiana. Never shot or trapped a single starling and never saw one in my martin housing.

We use only crescent entrances in our satellite martin colonies because they are located in more starling infested areas around Shreveport. Srehs work well if you have a starling problem and can be life saviors. We couldn't have productive satellite martin colonies in downtown Shreveport without using srehs.

We use what best meets the needs of martins in our various colonies and make decisions based on "good science", objective observations, what is happening in our area, situational colony management characteristics, and plain common sense.

Therefore, there is a place for both round holes and srehs and many capable martin landlords have validated that approach. We have done so with our personal martin colonies and our satellite locations. Rounds for our personal colonies and srehs for our satellites...working beautifully!

Steve

[Allan Day]

Brad,If you could just send some of your birds North to offer a weekend, "How to enter SREH" clinic, I'd appreciate it.
My birds must just be stupid. I watched them struggle for two weeks before I switched.

[Guest]

Steve, what is a super colony? Is that a legal term?

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey Carol,

Some folks consider a colony with 100 pairs of martins as a super martin colony. I had 309 pairs of martins in 2008 and Bob had around 150, so I guess we have super colonies! No, not a legal term!

Steve

[Brad-AL]

Joe, I have read before where some factory made entrances are too small on occasion, I'd guess maybe caused by a tooling change at the manufacturer or whatever. I make all my own entrances and check them with a caliper before installing them. If you have access to a digital caliper you might try checking the entrances. They should be 1.1875."

EDIT to add: There is no way I could host Martins without effective SREH. I think I live in the epicenter of the Starling population. Even when there are 100 pair of Martins here, I sometimes see as many Starlings a day as I do Martins. Even though I use SREH I trap, and shoot them regularly. I hope my efforts are at least helping other native cavity nesters on our farm. I saw the first pair of Red Headed Woodpeckers I have ever seen on our farm this past winter. I hope they can successfully raise here this year.

[Allan Day]

Wow Brad, with numbers like that I can understand your strict use of SREH.
Conversely, I've seen just one Starling land in a nearby tree all Winter. He flew away as I opened the door to shoot

I have a"Martin Militia" made up with my three boys 10,12,14. They'd love nothing better than to take out a Starling. Unfortunately for them, and good for me; they've only been shooting at pepsi cans on bamboo sticks all Winter

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Forgot to tell you, I have 240 gourds, 239 are SREH, and these gourds are nearly all filled every year. I even get a lot of ASY birds that cannot get in when they first come here, they keep trying and they all manage to get in before dark. I use porches and tunnels on all my gourds, the porches are about 1/8in below the SREH entrances.

I even have a few oversized SREH, with the porches so near the floor, the starlings that come here try and try, but then they go to the round holed traps, and get caught. I have not seen a starling enter any of my gourds in several years except the 1 round hole that I have. They can find that round hole in a hurry. I have it hanging where I can shoot the starlings, I like to do that..

I will say that the martins do not have any problem entering or exiting. They sure don't need round holes here. Quite frankly, I save a whole lot of time with SREH, its time consuming to try to shoot starlings. I just sit back, and watch the starlings try to enter, and its surprising how quickly they find the traps.

[Courtney-NC]

I have struggled with this issue as well. None of the landlords around me use SREH. I think all it would take though is for 1 martin to figure it out and 'show' another one, and then the rest would follow suit. I used this technique with my budgies (parakeets) when I was trying to teach them to eat pellets instead of straight seed. I had one hand-raised one that would eat the pellets and I'd put him in the aviary with the rest. Soon the others followed suit, but before that, they would have starved rather than touch 'em. They don't like change.

[trank]

I'm convinced new colonies can be started with SREH. When I started my colony I offered mostly SREH (WDC) and a few round holes. After years of trying , in one year I was fortunate enough to get 5 pair of SY. 3 of the 5 pair chose SREH over round holes even though they had a choice. I've used WDC from the start and find that PM have very little difficulty entering them, this year my site is 100% SREH. If you have starlings in your area and you offer deep compartments with round holes at your site it's a recipe for disaster.

Tom

[Guest]

WDC = ?

[Guest]

My sentiments and findings in starting and growing a colony from scratch to 36 pair here in three years is echoed in the experience of Brad, trank and Emil. I must disagree with Brad though cause Webster county MO has to be starling paradise! From the start, I could not see a preference in round vrs SREH. Starting in year one, the first four pair ever to nest here were in SREH. The fifth did take a round holed natural. So similar ratio of round to SREH offered was chosen. Monitored over the second year, again, the ratios were about the same, 4 to 1. So I determined that I was wasting my time with round holes altogether as last year I had only one round hole. Martins claimed it but were booted by a pair of starlings. I trapped both of them the next day, changed it to a cresent and the pair of displaced martins reclaimed it that afternoon. I couldn't tell that they even noticed the SREH on their gourd but they sure seemed to notice the starlings were gone! 109 empty cavities looking for martins to arrive, all SREH.
Wish I had never put up a round hole from the start cause they sure seemed not to aid me any. Only required more time and vigilance.
And like Emil, I also helped a friend start an all SREH colony near the golfcourse the first year he had it up.

[Matt F.]

WDC = ?

One of the modified variants of the original Excluder entrance (created by Duke Snyder), is the WDC Excluder. WDC are the initials of the creator, Willie D. Conley.



It's his name that's also on the new "Conley 2" entrances, seen here in this photo from the PMCA store:

It should be noted that often times, when folks refer to an entrance as simply "SREH", they're sometimes referring to the regular, Charles McEwen created crescent.