New PM Landlord - Add gourds?

[jonhauser65]

Hello Everyone, I am new to the landlord world. The only reason I put up a house was our old neighbors who lived next door for years had a PM house and everyday in the Summer months I would see their PM's hovering, diving above me in my yard catching insects and overall a wonderful site to experience. Well they moved a couple of years ago and the PM's left, and I said to my wife that I was going to change that and bring the PM's back hopefully..... Well I got started late and after reading some forums and websites on PM migration I put up the house on 3/10, hoping I would get some vistors. Well it I was fustriated that first week and got nothing accept Sparrows. Then I bought some PM decoys and a dawn CD and within 1 or 2 days, I got my first pair. Now I currently have 5 pairs of PM's all AY, no Subs yet so maybe that will change based on some of the posts I am reading from down at Corpus.

I bought some gourds to attach to the house, should I not put them up and just wait till next year or will that confuse the existing PM's?

Thanks for any advice as I am new at this, but it is truly gratifying!!!!!

Jon Hauser

[robndebby]

I would say put the gourds up. We have been landlords for 28 years and we started with houses. As the houses deteriorated, we replaced them with gourds. The Martins appeared to prefer the gourds, so now we have only gourds. I think we had 44 or 45 pairs last year and 153 babies. We first put up the gourds with round holes and still had so much trouble with starlings that we changed them all to the smaller crescent shaped openings. We still have sparrow problems in one or two at the beginning of each year, but we go out every day and pull the nest out. Eventually, as all the Martins arrive, the sparrows give up.

Good luck to you, New Landlord!

[Archer]

5 pairs is an excellent start, how many empty cavities do you have left? I would probably leave things alone as things are going well. Are any of your pairs already sitting on eggs? You do not want to disturb them too long if they are sitting on eggs. Adding a separate gourd rack would not disturb the other martins and that is how I would proceed if I wanted to add more in your situation.

[jonhauser65]

What I did was close the roof top cavitys as they were extremely hard to clean out from sparrows or nest checking, so I only have a total of (8) possible cavities with 6 filled. The other two I am consistently ripping out sparrow nests but they are persistent as well. I am looking at making a Sparrow Trap this weekend as they are getting more and more daring. Will keep you posted!