Photos Of Purple Martins Covering Trendsetters

[Steve Kroenke]

Photos Of Purple Martins Covering Trendsetters

Though we have few pairs of purple martins left feeding young, hundreds of martins come to “visit” each morning. Many of these martins are most likely ones that nested or were raised in our two personal colonies, mine and my neighbor Bob’s site. We may have around 12 pairs of martins still feeding babies in our colonies and most of these will be fledging in the next few days. I have three late nesting pairs that probably will not fledge their young until the end of July or during the first week of August.

The visiting martins particularly like to land on my five Trendsetter houses. Here are two photos showing a bunch of martins on one of my 12 room houses and my 16 roomer.

Martins covering 12 room Trendsetter



Martins covering 16 room Trendsetter



Steve

[Matt F.]

Great photos Steve!
I really like the taller/thinner stature of the 16-room model.

[pmartinlover2]

Thanks for the pics, Steve. You're almost thru another martin season which had its ups and downs, but look at all the martins you put in the air. Gives all us wannabes hope and we thank you for sharing your super colony with us.
____
Jody

[Steve Kroenke]

I am glad you liked the photos! The 16 room Trendsetter is my favorite Trendsetter model and the taller design is more attractive to me.

This morning several hundred martins are already here and they are landing all over the housing. The few remaining martin pairs do NOT like all these other martins trying to enter their nests and spend time guarding their babies. The "visitors" often try to enter the nests and are attracted by the vocalizing nestlings. SY males are particularly troublesome at times.

All this martin activity is also attracting "unwanted" visitors and several Cooper's hawks have been coming over and mainly looking for the remaining martin fledglings perched in trees/utility lines. The other day a Cooper's hawk caught a recent fledgling from a tall dead tree where numerous other fledglings have already been taken by the Grim Reaper. The parent martins continue to assemble their babies in this tree and the hawks continue to catch them almost daily. The hawks will continue to hunt the fledglings as long as they are in this area.

Steve

[John A Green Jr]

Hi Steve, great pics. You always have good information and excellent advice for us. I have a question off topic of the beautiful trendsetter and martins if you don't mind? I have an owl problem and have read your lengthy owl predation report from when you were in Florida and it's helped me tremendously in troubleshooting. Louise has helped me determine what problem I have. My question is for the gourd rack cages. Is it ok to use 4"x4" meshed wire. Trying to keep it as light as possible. I may have more questions as I proceed with this in the future if you don't mind, thanks in advance.

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey John,

I am glad my earlier postings have been helpful.

Owl predation is a serious problem for many purple martin colonies and one of the best ways to minimize such predation is with a wire cage around a house or gourd rack. You want your wire cage to extend OUT from the house porches or gourds to give maximum protection to the entrances or porches. I don't know if there is ideal distance but if you can I would have around eight or more inches of distance between the wire and the gourd or house porches/entrances to make it as difficult as possible for an large owl to reach the porches/entrances.

A 4" x 4" square wire mesh cage should keep large owls like great horned and barred owls at bay. The owls may still cling to the wire mesh and try to reach through with their feet but I doubt these large owls could squeeze their bodies through the openings. When owls do this, the house/rack would probably shake some and this may still cause some martins to flush.

A 2" x 4" rectangular wire mesh cage probably provides a little more protection mainly because it blocks more and no large owl could ever squeeze through it. But this cage would have more wire and would probably be heavier. Owls could still hang on the wire from the outside and try to reach through and martins may still flush out.

So I believe a 4" x 4" wire mesh would be a good choice in making a cage around your gourd racks to keep great horned/barred owls from reaching the entrances/porches of your gourds.

Owls hunt martins by sight and sound and owls can easily see martins perched/sleeping on house/gourd porches at night and in the early morning. Owls can easily hear martins vocalizing at night and during early morning, particularly during dawn singing time. Male martins may come out and sit on gourd/house porches during dawn singing and owls will catch them.

Here is a link to an article where I posted photos of April's owl guards and you may have already seen them. Her owl guard wire cages are outstanding and have done a good job at keeping owls from raiding her gourds and houses.

http://www.purplemartin.org/forum/viewt ... owl+guards


I hope this information has been helpful.

Steve

[John A Green Jr]

Yes, you are very helpful. I have an idea I would like to run by you. I would like to build a complete cage around the whole rack system, starting at the ground and ending above the rack. It would have a door for nest checks with at least a foot extra in diameter around the rack. This would be supported by 3 equally spaced, 20 foot long vertical pieces of angle iron cemented into the ground. This would be the frame to attach the fencing to. I believe if I can keep the owls totally off the rack (separate) then less flushing would occur. I know this seems like a lot but I know I could do it. Thanks for the advice and constructive criticism is welcome.

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey John,

That would be quite a project!

A complete cage from ground to the top would no doubt keep owls off the gourd rack.

But you may have possible problems with such a cage. First, you may have more possible problems with ground predators like rat snakes and raccoons. These predators would have more areas to climb up. So you would have to install some kind of guards all around the cage.

Second, I wonder if such a large cage may be somewhat intimidating to martins. The cage would go from the ground to above the rack and represent a complete enclosure. I don't know but would the martins "feel" too enclosed by such a cage?

Third, cages can slow down martins when they are bolting from their housing when an Accipiter hawk or merlin is attacking. The martins may hit against the wiring as they are panicking and trying to get through the cage and trying to accelerate. From what I have observed in my martin colonies, Accipiters and merlins usually attack martins in flight and every fraction of second counts when martins are trying to out fly one of these fast raptors. So a cage that completely encloses a gourd rack may inadvertently function as a barrier to martins when they are bolting and trying to escape from an attacking raptor. Martins often dive down from their housing to build up speed initially and a complete cage may initially slow down martins if they have to first negotiate through the wire mesh. Wire cages with semi-open bottoms allow martins to drop down unimpeded and then accelerate.

Fourth, would a complete cage be more difficult to deal with when conducting nest checks? Would you have enough room inside the cage to move around easily?

These are a few potential problems you may encounter with a cage that completely encloses a gourd rack from the ground to the top. But you may not have problems and it wouldn't hurt to at least try such a system perhaps on one of your gourd racks to see how the martins respond.

If you decide to build a total cage, I hope you will share some photos on the Forum. Good luck.

Steve

[John A Green Jr]

Thanks for the perspective Steve. They are all good suggestions and I will seriously take them under advisement. I believe I had an owl attack last year and the reason I didn't put cages up this year is just what you said, it may impede quick escape. My problem is I don't know what damage occurred this season although one owl attack is to many. I have a lot of thinking to do this off season and may be back in touch. Thanks again so much for your support.