Parents feeding egg shells

[ToyinPA]

My husband & I watched a pair of SY's feed their chicks a dragonfly, then egg shell. This was the first time we have ever seen a parent do this. We see them sitting & eating it. They went thru a lot of egg shells this year.

I have a frisbee turned upside down on top of a wood clothesline post, under one martin house, that I dump oyster shell & crushed egg shells in. It has a few holes drilled in it to let rain out. This was actually the first year all my martins ate the shells. They are also very fussy about the size of egg shells. We'd watch them pick a piece up, toss it & grab another.

Anyone else see parents feed chicks egg shells? Is this normal?

Toy in PA

[StillwaterMartins]

Yes, I've seen my SY parents feed their chicks egg shells as well. I've even found a bunch of them in the nests.

They are actually getting them off of our patio (on the ground). One year we put out egg shells in a tray feeder and hung it from one of our hooks on our bird feeder pole. We didn't have any takers including the dozens of tree swallows we have. One night a hung rain storm came through and knocked the tray feeder to the ground and scattered all the egg shells around. The next day we had dozens of tree and barn swallows eating the egg shells from the ground. I've been scattering them around the patio ever since. This was long before we had any Purple Martins.

I think the Purple Martins have been talking to the Barn Swallows as they starting eating egg shells from the ground as well.

Carol

[ToyinPA]

I started out putting the egg shells on the sidewalk, but my toy poodles decided to eat them. Not good. Hence the frisbee idea.

Toy in PA

[Gobbler T]

I saw my ASY male fed egg shells to the babies. I use a frisbee too. I never saw my resident martins eat them but the visiting sy's would (only the males), and a lot of finches did too.