Any suggestions on dawn song player?

[SE Wisc hopefull]

Well this year was not a total loss. Had several visits and a young male hanging around a lot this spring. Plus moved about 24 HOSP to the afterlife. Thinking of stepping up my game for next year.

This year I played my dawn song from the porch, which is 120’ from house/gourds. At times I would also run thru my P/U speakers. Questions for the experts…
1- recommendations on boom box? Battery powered or run long extension cord?
2- sound level to play it. Is unnaturally loud work better to increase distance?
3- is it common to get a player with timer and auto on, so you don’t have to be up at 4:30 every morning?
Thanks

[Ryan]

I've been doing the dawnsong for a long time up here where there's almost no martins. I, like you have my player at least 120 feet from housing. They will find your housing, I don't think thats an issue, they'll see it from that close, but yes if it's simple to move the sound to your housing, do it but it's not critical.

Since I'm over 25 miles to nearest colony, I tried to play the dawnsong really loud a couple years. Those years were in fact my worst years as I saw none. I can't monitor the site all day but didn't see any hang around like I occasionally do. I believe the loud dawnsong probably brought a few in to look (mayne more than ever with the loud reach), but they probably were terrified and left right away. If I was around all day maybe it would have worked.

Lastly I use an old 1995 Sony CD stereo that I bought new as a kid for like $300. Saved up and cost a fortune. Worth maybe $10 today. I dont know what I'll do if it goes down but it works well. I'm sure digital can be super easy if you get a timer too, but I've been doing it so long I have the old CD player still going. It has its own timer to turn on and shut off. I keep it in a plywood box with legs and a flip up door to keep it out of sun and rain. Instead of speakers I use a power horn connected with the old fashioned left and right speaker wire. It works great as I have horn in a tree pointed south east which is my closest colony.

Mayne ways to do it and I'm sure there some easy digital ways now, but if you find the right old stereo, she'll still do the trick.

My biggest issue is ants right now. Really wet up here this year and despite a bunch of ant traps and ant killer they fill the inside of my stereo, three times thisnyear already. The volume cuts to nothing. I thought they killed it but I just take the cover off and blow them out with an air compressor and it works fine again. Weird. Not sure how they kill the sound and not sure why they love nesting in the stereo. Must be the dry heat in the box.

[MY FYN 79]

This post had me wondering.... We have an Echo dot in our garage which is close to our Gourds. So I went out and asked Alexa to play the Dawn song. No go. I wonder if there really is a way to do that with the dot though.

When I played it a couple years back, I just hung a computer speaker out our house window.

[RAMSMARTINS]

In my opinion, the martin "chatter" CD is a better magnet for attracting martins, especially early in the season. "Dawn song" is a very specific time for martins, when eggs have been laid and males are serenading females. This makes it a very specific and relatively short time period, whereas the "chatter" works throughout the year.

[flyin-lowe]

With all the streaming of music etc. I am not sure how available they are but I always used a CD player alarm clock. Most have 2 alarms and the CD is around 70 minutes (at least mine was). I would set the first alarm for around 4:30 am the second for around 5:45. By the time it stopped the second time I was awake and ready for work. I would hit the play button one more time on my way out the door so it would basically play from 4:30 to around 8:30. As far as placement don't worry about it being right by your housing, I kept mine on my front porch so it was out of the weather. As long as it gets their attention they would swing by and check out your housing. Just getting them to drop down out of the sky is the purpose. At my original colony I didn't have a covered porch so I had the player inside of a trash bag, on a milk crate so it was off the ground. I could usually get 2-3 years out of the player before it would stop working due to the weather/moisture. Back then I could get a cheap one at wal mart for around 20.00. I am not sure what.s out there now. I assume you can get some type of external blue tooth speaker and run it from a device inside and set it up to start and stop whenever you want.

[SE Wisc hopefull]

Thanks for input … any more advice on volume level… natural level best?