Bob, my next door neighbor, and I have two super large purple martin colonies housing over 500 pairs of martins each season. We also have established five satellite martin colonies around northwest Louisiana and these colonies have 200+ pairs of martins each year.
At our various satellite martin colonies we use Lone Stars and Trio M-12s, Grandpas, Duracrafts, and Castles. I furnished some of these houses and Bob acquired others, some of which must be over 30 years old. Trios seem to last forever but you still often have to replace rusty screws/bolts and other metal parts. Bob is an expert at fixing up old Trios!
And we also use houses that Bob has built from aluminum trim coil. Bob has been building these houses since the early 80s and the martins have done well in them. Often his houses are 100% occupied by martins. He uses two main designs and his houses are simple, functional, light weight, and easy to erect. Nothing complicated or super fancy! In some cases, he even uses parts of old Trios to combine with his houses. We primarily install these houses on multi-purpose poles systems. We also have Trios on multi-purpose poles.
His older square design looks similar to the Trendsetter and Bob started building his houses back in the 80s. This house has one entrance hole per floor per side and the holes are staggered. He is now adding porch dividers to the corners of this design to keep martin nestlings from moving around on the porches and also minimize nest domination behavior. He has used 8 (2 story) and 12 (3 story) room houses. Room sizes are around 8 x 8 inches square but there is some variation. Since these houses are used at satellite martin colonies where starling issues are more common and we can’t monitor the sites daily, all entrances are crescents and he is now making them flush with the porches to provide even more resistance to possible starling intrusion. Select door panels flip up for nest checks, cleaning and removing any house sparrow nests; for the sake of simplicity, each panel accesses 2 rooms at a time and this method works fine for us. We hope to start using some kind of nest trays in this house design beginning in 2016.
The other design is similar to the old Trio M-12 style. Bob uses enlarged compartments of 6 x 12 inches with 3 rooms per side. Porch dividers separate the door panels with 2 entrances. There are 2 door panels that flip up and 3 rooms can be accessed at the same time. This works fine for us though having separate access doors per room would be the ideal way of checking nests, cleaning and removing any sparrow nests. We use crescents on these houses since these are for our satellite martin colonies and Bob uses entrances that are flush with the porches. We used nest trays in several of these houses this year and they worked perfectly in keeping the nests dry and preventing nesting material from blocking the flush crescent. We plan to use many more nest trays next season in our satellite colonies.
We are planning to start working on our satellite colonies probably in September and Bob may even build a few more houses if necessary.
Here are some photos of Bob’s martin houses.
This photo shows 7 of his houses lined up. There are 4 of the Trio types and 3 of the Trendsetter square style with entrances on each side. There are 6 new ones and an old 12 roomer on the end. Bob will most likely install porch dividers on the corners of the square houses. These houses will replace some older houses at select satellite colonies and all will be erected on multi-purpose poles.
This photo shows 2 houses with the door panels opened. Bob’s door panels are riveted to the house sides and the ones that open have only two rivets. This allows the doors to swing up. The doors are kept closed by inserting removable nails through holes in the bottom rim of the door panel. We could just as easily use a bolt, but the nail approach has worked just fine for years and none has ever been knocked out by martins or the weather. Take the nails out and then open the door.
This photo shows an opened door panel of one of Bob’s houses that also has a few Trio parts. There are two houses on a multi-purpose pole and we used nest trays this season. The nest trays have kept the nests dry and largely kept nesting material from blocking the flush crescents. We have this system at our “dump satellite colony” located about 3 miles from our personal colonies.
This photo shows house in the previous picture on a multi-purpose pole with another house and 4 Super Gourds. Martins did very well in this set-up this season. We have systems like this at other satellite colonies.
Bob attaches the houses on multi-purpose poles with metal channel. This approach stabilizes the houses very well. This photo shows how one of the houses described above is attached to the multi-purpose pole hub arms.
This is a photo of one of Bob’s Trio style houses. He built this house this year and it will be placed at one of our satellite colonies.
This is a photo of one of Bob’s square (Trendsetter like) style houses. It, too, will be placed at one of our satellite colonies. Bob will place porch dividers at the corners of this house.
Steve
