Protect Your Housing Against Snakes - Even in a City

[Dick Sherry]

Afetr 30+ years of hosting martins in the middle of a fairly large city, and believing we didn't have a snake threat, one got into our martin house over the weekend and ate at least one nestling and killed two others.

We had been gone for a coup[le days, and Friday eveing I noticed one of the nests was not being fed. At dusk, I noticed flies hovering on either side of the house by that compartment. So early Saturday morning I lowered the house and opened the back compartment door (Trio Grandpa converted to double room compartments) and found a dead nestling (about 8 or 9 days old). When I opened the other side, there was another dead nestling and a dark snake with a large bulge in the middle. I grabbed it with a gloved hand and dropped it in a large box. It did not move well with the large meal still being digested. It had a very small head compared to its thicker midsection, and was about 14-16 inches in length. The body was a dark brownish-gray and had a diamond shaped pattern on its upper body. I have looked through a field guide of reptiles but am not sure what it was. My guess is a small norhtern water snake.

So I have now put a snake guard (a wad of bird netting)on the pole above the predator guard that obviously didn't stop this snake. The pair that lost their young were ASY birds, and with the nesting season already being 3 to 4 weeks behind, I doubt if they will try to nest again, and if they do, it will probably be somewhere else. Between the cold wet Spring, and a Coopers hawk that seems to be around frequently, this has been another tough nesting season for martins here.

So regardless of where you live, consider putting something in place to keep snakes from getting to your birds, and make it as hard as possible for the predators, because they seem to be thriving, and are impacting nesting martins much more than I ever recall in the 50+ years I have been involved with martins.

[Jodiebf]

Dick-So sorry to hear about your snake loss. I'm glad it wasn't a bigger snake that could eat more!. The bird net snake guards do work. I caught my first (and only) snake with a bird netting trap just last Wednesday. I had a 2 foot PMCA "stovepipe" type guard on the pole, topped with my homemade bird netting/zip tie snake guard. The 5 foot chicken snake had slithered up the outside of the stovepipe guard, but, when it tried to navigate the bird netting got stuck. It appeared to have had it's head stuck through one of the holes and "hung" itself. I believe in both.

Jodie

[KathyF]

So sorry to hear that, Dick. On another note - WHAT??? you grabbed a snake and didn't know what it was???

[tonyg]

Nice reminder Dick!!! I learned that hard lesson 6 yrs ago, never again!!

[Dick Sherry]

Thank you all for your replies. Kathy, I could see enough of the snake that I was pretty sure it was not a poisonous variety, and I grabbed it close enough to the head that it could not reach around and bite my lower arm. I had some cushioned rubber gloves on so I could have a better grip.

I think that through the whole process of discovering what the situation was, removing the snake and cleaning out the compartments I was in disbelief that we had a snake that found its way to our martin housing and was dining on nestlings. I will not make the mistake again of assuming there aren't snakes like this in town, and when I give martin programs in the future, I will stongly encourage people to include snake protection with their other safeguards against owls, hawks, raccoons, etc..

[KathyF]

Dick, my reflexes are WAY too slow to try to grab a snake. My reaction is, "knees to elbows, honey and run!"
Hubby deals with any snakes and I deal with the spiders.

Seriously, this is good advice - I can't tell you how many times each year that I see people reporting snake attacks.

Thanks, Dick

[jr 2]

would not the other martins be making a commotion if there was a snake close by or in the martin house???????here we have cats around and when they get close too the martin houses you can tell as the martins keep flying around the houses;;;jr2

[Louise Chambers]

Twice I've been at sites where there was a snake in a gourd or compartment, and no one knew - humans certainly not, martins did not appear to know, they just went on feeding away, even though snake was in one room of house, with some martins inside it, and a dead nestling on porch! In other instance, snake was in one gourd and had eaten eggs, never knew if it got parents or not. All the other gourds held eggs or young, and parents were feeding.

Nest checks are sometimes the only way to learn what's going on. I guess if the martins do not see the snake, say it climbed pole and entered gourd after dark, they may not know it's around, until it enters their compartment.

In one case the snake had bypassed a guard, and netting was added, no more losses. In the other, the landlord had good pole guards but took them off the night before to simplify AM banding project. In each case, luckily, only one nest had been raided.

[stan davison]

Dick, sorry hear about your loss. Do you still have any pairs that will fledge young? I have pole guards and netting but after hearing your story I am going to make sure my netting is right and keep a better eye on things.

[jr 2]

louise;;thanks for your answer;;i will be putting snake netting on my poles

[Louise Chambers]

The worst thing we hear new landlords say is, "Predators? We don't have any of those around here." This is usually in reply to being advised to install pole guards for protection from raccoons and snakes.

Dick is so right, and so very helpful to share his story; it doesn't matter if you live inside city limits or not, martin houses, bluebird boxes, etc., all need protection from raccoons, snakes, and oftentimes hawks and owls too.

We live inside Corpus Christi city limits - one winter we had a pair of Great Horned Owls in neighbor's oak tree every night for a couple of months. I never see raccoons here - until one night when I saw a mother raccoon and kids traveling down the street, going into storm drains for cover. Never saw a snake here, until my husband spotted a rat snake crossing a busy street just around the corner. Nature is full of surprises - don't let your martins fall victim to an unpleasant surprise, use pole guards.

[Dick Sherry]

It seems like a lot of things have changed over the last 30 to 40 years as far as predator populations in our urban area go. Before I changed to smaller diameter entrances in the 1970's, we had a screech owl take up residence in our martin house that had 2 and a half inch openings, and it scared off our colony (I was away un the Army at the time and discovered it while home for a visit). We now have fish crows that have extended their range northward, Mississippi kites, Coopers and sharpshinned hawks that now nest here, raccoons, snakes and owls. And it seems like there are a lot fewer martin colonies in the area, even though there are quite a few martin houses, but many are in poor locations or poor quality aluminum houses. Anyway, we just need to keep trying to help these fascinating birds, and try to help them prosper when they are dealing with a lot of creatures that want to make them dinner.

[stan davison]

Dick, You are right about a lot of the local colony's. I moved here in 2004 and have since noticed a huge decline. If all goes well I should fledge over 130 babies this season, however if we have over 100 degrees in the next couple weeks there will be total devastation here.

[M.Stephens]

I'll second what Louise said. Just because there's no commotion from the martins doesn't mean everything is ok. My nest checks this year revealed a snake on 2 separate occasions. The martins were going along with business as usual. As if nothing bad was happening. I lost over 30 eggs in the first raid. All of my housing has double protection , 6" pvc on 6 poles and 2- 10" pvc on 2 others and a 8" metal baffle on another. There is snake netting added to every pole also and they still got past it!!! Next year electric will be added along with this protection as backup. I hate losing martins and young!!!!!

[MamaBruff]

Maybe we need a really good tutorial on snake netting. I know I do. I have searched, and just find stuff like "wad it up there and put a bungee on it." But how much to netting to use? How far should it stick out from the pole? Should it touch the top of predator guard or be higher up? I'm pretty sure my first attempt is less than adequate and the wad is too small, as I only used 1/2 a pkg of the netting. Any takers?

[Louise Chambers]

Here are a couple of methods for installing netting:

http://www.purplemartin.org/forum/viewt ... rd+netting

http://www.purplemartin.org/forum/viewt ... highlight=

Placing netting above the baffle or whatever guard you use against raccoons is a good way to minimize catch of smaller snakes - some landlords use a bungee cord or releasable cable ties so they can either slide the netting down or remove it for nest checks. Info on this idea: http://www.purplemartin.org/forum/viewt ... releasable

[Dick Sherry]

In rereading the posts I see I never answered questions that jr2 and Stan asked.

jr2, there was no alarm being shown by the other martins, and what caught my attention on Friday evening was that one pair was not bringing any food to their nest, and then I saw the flies hovering in the air on both sides of the house near the front and rear of the double compartment room. I was really expecting to find a dead nestling when I lowered the housing Saturday morning, but never expected to find a snake. It was very much like Louise described, and I suspect that the snake entered at night, and once it ate a young one, it became so sluggish while it digested it that it moved very little.

Stan, we have three other pairs that have young that are about two and a half weeks old. There are a total of eleven nestlings, and they all looked very healthy at last check. There is also a pair of SY birds that have a very poor nest that has 4 eggs, and they appear to be bringing food now, so I am not sure how optimistic to be. This would have been our best year at this new location, so it will be a matter of outsmarting the predators and trying to provide as safe a site as possible and see if we can grow this small colony.

[stan davison]

Dick, with such a great location you have and all your experience as a land lord, your colony will surely grow and thrive.

[MamaBruff]

Thx for the info Louise; I will work on improvements this wknd!

[Thurman Seber~TN]

Dick you are very correct and I know what you say is true. You saved some martins today by posting this. I posted a few weeks back that many more colonies had snake problems than landlords realized. They don't see the snake and unless they see the remaining martins become agitated they never know anything is going on. I removed two snakes from my netting in one day but that is not a record for me. Last year I removed three the same day