I finally finished pre-nesting all 324 gourds and 80 nest trays! All gourds are on the racks and the nest trays in the Trendsetters. So I will have 404 cavities for my purple martins in 2017. All housing systems are lowered right now but I will start raising gourd racks and houses in the next few days. I attracted about 376 pairs of martins in 2016 and fledged well over a thousand youngsters.
We usually see our first purple martin at one of our two personal martin colonies, mine and my neighbor Bob’s, during the last week of January. Last year a female ASY martin showed up January 27. If I am lucky, I will be out in the yard when the first martin arrives and he/she will often fly down to the gourd rack or house nested in the previous year. Then that system will be raised if lowered. One year an ASY male martin appeared at almost dark on January 24 (the earliest ever for my current colony) and he roosted in a Troyer Horizontal gourd on a lowered rack that was only about 6 feet off the ground! I didn’t want to disturb the martin that late in the evening so I didn’t raise the gourd rack and he stayed for the night! I raised the rack the next day after he left to feed.
I have included some photos of my lowered gourd racks/houses:
One section of my colony.
Another section of my colony.
Another section of my colony.
Steve
