Iowa Martin Migration Status Inquiry

avesrun · Sun May 06, 2018 6:42 pm

Any Iowa landlords wanting to chime in on how their season is progressing please do! Do you think ASY arrivals still forthcoming? My satellite site has 30-50 martins mostly asy with maybe 60%male and 40%female. A few sy females. Haven't seemed to pick up much in the way of new birds for what seems like a week or so. Weather for the most part has been favorable. The South winds of last week didn't seem to bring in a "wave" of new martins......My home site is Dead presently! Best of season everyone!
TimG

Dave Duit · Sun May 06, 2018 6:46 pm

Hi Tim,
Fancy seeing you here. lol. Anyway, three days ago I had 25 total, yesterday that number jumped to 48. But, we need to keep in mind we had a very strange cold beginning to the season. I think it will be difficult to predict what kind of numbers the midwest will get this year.

JamesinIA · Mon May 07, 2018 6:26 am

Hey Tim

I have been seeing a gradual increase every couple of days. Got my first sy male on sat. and have seen a couple of sy females too. I am up to around 30 pair at this time. looks to be a good season around here in south eastern Iowa so far. Hope your numbers start climbing and that you get some to commit to your home site.

paule · Mon May 07, 2018 9:41 am

Tim,
I'm staying around 30 - 35. Two days ago (Sat) my numbers were up but a group moved on. A friend north of me got birds the same day. His first this year. Now back to about 33. A guess is 60% M 40% F also. Two SYF, zero SYM's so far. They have been using our colony as a stop over this year more than I have seen before. Many have nests built which is in line with last year. More than likely we will need quite a few SY birds to reach the 26 nests of last year. This year is definitely out of the norm for us.
Hopping some of our ASY's are still in route.
Paul

phldave · Mon May 07, 2018 12:53 pm

Tim,
It's been dead around here since the 18th of April. Even though it's only been a couple weeks it seems like an eternity after being treated to a dozen migrants for a week. In that time I have only spotted a pair that appeared to be feeding together. Lynn said their place only had SYF also.
Dave

lynnh · Mon May 07, 2018 6:56 pm

Hey Tim, we have well over 200 birds here all ASY except for A few SY females no SY males yet that I've noticed anyway . Pretty sure that most of the males are paired up there maybe one or two maybe three that aren't. Last night there were four ASY males and three SY females roosting on porches i am assuming that a few of those if not all we're just stop overs.

avesrun · Tue May 08, 2018 12:27 pm

Thank you for your reporting in Iowans and the update. As of this morning, I do now have 1 sy male at my public site. Overall though it appears we may have at least one more wave of subadults to arrive in the 2-3wks ahead. Best of season I bid you all.
TimG

MartinMama · Thu May 10, 2018 12:03 pm

I've had my same 5 ASY birds since the middle of April (new colony at my home). I noticed a SY female stop in yesterday, but she did not stick around. Looking back on my records from last year, I got my SY birds (that founded this colony) the 24th of May, so we are well within "normal" yet and I would not give up hope of gaining some new SY birds to your colony.

paule · Thu May 10, 2018 5:21 pm

We observed two SY-M's at 1:30 pm in Grundy Center, Iowa today. Three days earlier than last year. Had to get going shortly after so didn't observe how much chaos they may have caused at our site.

Paul

Dave Duit · Fri May 11, 2018 10:56 am

Any Iowa martin landlords can report ASY and SY arrivals to me and I will post them on the Iowa website. I enter them on a daily basis from the PMCA website, doing a search of the scout arrival PMCA map, I transfer that data on our Iowa website. In the forum section under " 2018 ASY scout & SY subbies arrival reports for Iowa " Email me at dave@iamartin if your report doesn't appear on our Iowa website. Thanks.