Prolonged egg incubation question for Texans

[Fireflyfisherman]

This is my first year and I have my first pair of SY birds that laid their last egg on May 11. Momma has been sitting on the eggs and continues to sit on the eggs. Are any of yall having prolonged incubation a due to the horrible rains and weather? There is a lot of activity at the sight and several new birds have shown up and are checking out cavities (afraid that they are from another colony effected by floods/weather). Male martin has added leaves to the cavity. I will do a nest check later today. Last check was 2 days ago and still had 5 unhatched eggs.

[kehunter]

I had two complete nests (11 eggs) that failed to develop. One mama started throwing out eggs about a week before I helped her with the final decision by candling the eggs and confirming they were duds. The other female diligently sat the eggs until they were more than a week overdue. Similarly, I finally checked them and disposed of them all. I guess the rough weather may have been the cause.

That being said, yours appear to be just barely overdue. You should probably give them another few days before getting too worried.

[Matt@atx]

I'm no expert on it but I give it more time and wait it out. I do not know the time line of when they should hatch but there were some nests that I thought would not hatch because they seemed to be there a longer time then others and never saw a parent sitting on them but they hatched recently surprisingly enough.

I always thought that they would know if eggs were bad and just lay some more but if not, at least your not ripping her nest out end of season and she may say well that's it and take off.

[Fireflyfisherman]

It took a while to finally get a quick nest check in. There was so much activity and I wanted to wait until both momma and daddy were out of the nest. There were three beautiful baby martins. 2 eggs were still unhatched. While i was raising their house back up the parents returned and were not happy. Momma tried landing on the house while i was raising it back up. Very exciting.

[Matt@atx]

It took a while to finally get a quick nest check in. There was so much activity and I wanted to wait until both momma and daddy were out of the nest. There were three beautiful baby martins. 2 eggs were still unhatched. While i was raising their house back up the parents returned and were not happy. Momma tried landing on the house while i was raising it back up. Very exciting.

Thanks for sharing those pics. Mighty good looking babies there.

[BW Fowler]

Congratulations! Keep an eye out for mites and black flies, and before you know it, your baby birds will be flying. I think it (only) takes about 26 days for them to fledge after they hatch. They will grow faster than you can imagine!

BW

[Fireflyfisherman]

Today I watched 3 baby martins take flight. It was awesome.

[DebA]

That's so sweet! I came late to this thread and got to read the whole story. Thanks for posting the ending. I hope you get them back next year!
Deb

[tim414]

I'm also late to this thread.

I do not have Martins yet. There are no colonies in over 20 miles from my site.

However, I have experienced NO EGGS hatch this year from all the Blubird nest. I had two pair sit on their nest which were both 10 days overdue to hatch. They finally gave up, and I immediately cleaned out the nest box, There are a dozen eggs I cleaned out of nest boxes so far. I still have one nest box with active nesting Blubirds.

She started incubating five days ago. I hope these hatch.

We have had so much rain this year. Very unusual. But, it will be our luck there will be drought the next seven years LOL.

Lake Texoma, the last time I checked (before all the rain stated) was around 20 feet BELOW normal. But of course, it's used to generate electricity for rural homes and rural Municipalities, and, the cities of Dallas, Sherman and Denison (Denison also sells it to Pottsboro because Pottsboro is so close and it's a small community at Lake Texoma), all these cities pump water from Texoma for drinking purposes.

Twice this year Lake Texoma OVERFLOWED. This set new records. The Denison Dam was completed in 1943. It was the largest earthen dam in the world when it was completed, creating a lake with OVER 500 miles of shore line.

The dam is OVER 3 miles wide and it's spillway is a half mile wide. Imagine a wall of water four feet high, a half mile wide dumping water and the flood gates of the dam were open, which all four flood gates, when open, release 88,000 cubic feet per SECOND. It was estimated the amount spilling over the spillway was 130k cubic feet/second. add the two together and the lake was filling at twice that rate, which has NEVER happened before since the lake was built.

The shoreline of the lake increased over 20 percent because it had risen so high. The boat houses are ALL still under water today as I type this.

The lake level CANNOT be lowered too fast or it will flood communities across North Texas, Arkansas and Louisana all the way to the Miss River.

I stated all the above because it exemplifies the amount of rain we have had this year.

Lake Texoma remains one of the WORLDS top ten LARGEST man-made lakes of the world (ranks #6 today). It takes ALOT of rain to fill it, much less cause it to overflow, which until this year, has only done three times in 60 years. Noting; when it was built, the US Army Corp of Engineers estimated it would overflow ONCE every 100 years. It did this twice in 30 days this year.

I wonder if all this rain had a negative impact on bird reproduction, or if only certain species was more affected than another....??

Tim