It was a long, long, long season...

[zekeandbelle]

My neighbors don't "get this", but I know all of you will.....After 98 nights, the battle with the owl and is finally over (hopefully for just this year) and luckily, the martins and I won! On May 14th, I confirmed that a great horned owl was attacking my small colony and had gotten two of the ASY's from the enlarged, straight back, 6 x 12 trio. I was devastated! So the next day, we quickly built a cage for two trio houses and the Troyer rack. Thanks so very, very much to those of you who gave advice for building the cages! It was not a simple thing to do! Then that night I began monitoring the houses with a night vision camera and I started setting up an "owl diorama" every night around the houses, to hopefully dissuade the owl from stopping by the houses. I became fairly creative and used anything and everything around the house. I used 6 different heights of 6 tall poles and shepherd hooks and attached something to the top of each of them every Monday...grand kids squirt guns, reflective streamers, kid beach chairs, stuffed animals, halloween ghosts, plastic pumpkins, every holiday decoration I have I think, home made scarecrows, ladders, painted shapes with big eyes, fishing nets, giant pool inflatables, toy dinosaurs, toy construction vehicles, sombreros, buckets, upside down leaf rakes, xmas candy canes and santas, large gingerbread men, big plastic snowmen, badminton racks, lacrosse sticks, baby dolls in toddler swings, mannequins, scuba fins, boogie boards, sleds, pinwheels, kites, hula skirts, traffic cones, whatever I could find went way up in the air to look foreboding. The owl experts said once an owl has eaten from a house, it is nearly impossible to stop it, and they said to try to scare it away, but not to worry about something looking realistic, just to focus on changing the different shapes every 5 or 7 days. I also always hung a different shaped string of outside lights every Monday and stuck two high powered led lights in the ground to shine on the biggest thing I had out there. Needless to say, the neighbors would pass by in their boats and stop and stare! Although I found a huge pile of dove feathers under the evergreen about 200 feet away on July 15th, the owl never showed up on the camera. We still saw it fly over and heard it nearly every night for the last two weeks of May and the first week of June. I live on a peninsula on a lake in southeastern Michigan and every 2nd or 3rd night it would fly low over me, either coming from the east, west or north and I would blow the air horn or survival whistle. That owl knew exactly what it was looking for and where to go. Like others have said, I really believe the cages are what saved my martins. I changed my scare-away-display every Monday night, and left it up for the next 7 days, but then took it down early every morning, for 98 days and nights, ending last night, when my last family who had just fledged two babies last Friday, and several other martins finally did not return at sunset to sleep in their familiar gourds/houses. What a long, long season! But my martins actually increased from last year!! I inherited a very small colony in 1986 that my neighbor, who has since moved, had started in the early 1970's. We have luckily had martins every single year for several decades, although few in numbers. And although I had always loved watching and listening to them, it wasn't until last spring, 2016, that I got "educated" and found out about the dangers of sparrows and starlings and thanks to the pmca website, I learned how to be a responsible landlord. So last year I trapped nearly 100 sparrows and 17 starlings. And last year, I think we had about 10 fledglings. This past spring I had decided to really focus on increasing their numbers and had bought a beautiful new Troyer rack. Then the owl struck and it found them very early in the season...and protecting the birds that I had, became the priority. And so we ended this season with 22 adults (12 of which were SY) who nested. I did nest checks, (thanks for showing me how, Genny!), which were a huge pain, (literally!) under the cages, and 31 babies hatched! We had very attentive parents, no bugs, no mites, no bad weather, no blow flies and no problems..other than the worst one of all..the owl. And all 31 fledged, although they were very spread out over several weeks, like many other people saw this year. So even with the owl problem, the numbers of birds tripled! I really believe this was due to my "dispensing" of another 34 sparrows and 9 starlings this spring/summer. So next week we will take down the houses/gourd rack and cages and try to figure out how to rebuild them so they are stronger but less heavy and cumbersome. I am so hopeful that someone will engineer and market commercially built cages...they are extremely difficult to build with no protocols, and for those people like me who are so not "handy". I often notice so many, many photos of people's houses/gourd racks that are posted on various websites and facebook pages with no owl protection. I always think... how sad that there is nothing to protect the martins from the talons of those owls. We all work so very, very hard to keep them safe and alive and multiplying! After over 30 years I NEVER expected to have an owl attack. Like Steve, I think, said, "it is not a matter of if you will have an owl attack, it is just a matter of when". And as much as I dislike the way the cages look, the martins and fledges had no problems maneuvering in and out of them, and every night, after I had set up my owl scare-away at dusk and I saw the martins perched on their porches inside the cage, I had some small bit of peace of mind knowing I had done all I could to protect them. I can never take the cages off, I just have to improve on them for next year. And although I am going to terribly miss watching and hearing those amazing martins, like everyone else who loves them, I am happy the battle for this year is over! And there are 31 new beloved martins flying out there somewhere!
jan

[taxidermy lady]

All I can say about that is bravo my friend! Imagination is the key! Good luck next year!

[Dave Reynolds]

Your so right... What a story... So glad that you succeeded... and the fledglings have made to out ok.. Good Job

Dave

[taxidermy lady]

I sure look for that like button!
This would have a pmca record on likes!
I had to read this story again, love it!

[cabin man]

Jan. What a great post! Yes. We all get it. That's the same way I feel when I post something on the forum . We are all like minded. Once again, fantastic story and congratulations on your ingenuity and perseverance. Rob