Give House Sparrows their own martin house!

[Mary Dawnsong]

f you live in an area where there's a shortage of nesting cavities and a high population of House Sparrows (HOSP) this will put tremendous pressure on your martin house. The House Sparrows will be driven to claim martin compartments. In my experience, the best way to eliminate cavity-seeking HOSP is to erect separate, permanent nestbox traps.

There are two basic types of live traps for birds - bait traps and nestbox traps. Each can work well, but right now the nestbox traps are likely to be much more effective. That's because the HOSP are more interested in cavities than bait. Now, you can bait with nest material like feathers, but the HOSP are going to need a cavity before they are attracted to nest material.

The best nestbox traps for HOSP have entries that are too small for martins to enter. The Trio Spare-O-Door is an extremely effective and durable trap and it cannot trap martins. Unfortunately, the Spare-O-Door only works in Trio/Nature House compartments. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to find used Trio martin houses for sale. Here's what the trap looks like:
http://tinyurl.com/yvjdes
(Wow! These have gotten expensive! The PMCA member price is $2 less.)

Find a used Trio martin house and buy a few Spare-O-Doors. Use them to make a dedicated trap house. Erect the trap house in a less open area than your martin housing and it will be more attractive to HOSP than your martin house is. Monitor the trap house carefully, there is a chance of it catching smaller native birds.

My HOSP trap is an 8-compartment Trio house with 8 Spare-O-Doors. I've been using it for 2 years and estimate it has kept over 95% of cavity-seeking HOSP away from my martin, Tree Swallow, and Bluebird housing. I erected it on April 4 this season and in 10 weeks it has caught 36 male and 15 female HOSP, most of them in the first 6 weeks. The HOSP trao stays active all season whenever I am around to monitor - that's necessary because HOSP raise 3-5 broods PER SEASON!

Here is an excellent PMCA Update Magazine article that goes into much more detail on this type of trapping, including lot's of photos of the Spare-O-Door in use:
http://www.purplemartin.org/update/HSControl.pdf

Need a cheaper or faster solution? Build it yourself!
If you are a do-it-yourself kind of landlord, you can build your own trap house. Buy or build a simple wooden martin house with small compartments and fill it with homemade Huber traps. Here's how to make a Huber trap:
http://community-2.webtv.net/hubertrap/ ... OWCONTROL/
http://audubon-omaha.org/bbbox/nestbox/huber.htm

[Dale Hrncirik]

Mary,

That is great advice! I just want to add two more important points regarding trapping. Here in north Texas, the temps have been unseasonably high for June. I recently disabled all my single nest box traps because any bird that gets trapped could easily die in the box in a few hours of 95+ degree heat(probably much hotter in an enclosed box). I usually get home by 3:30 but still feel uncomfortable using the NB traps when the high temps are expected to be 95 F or above. Anyone using this style of trap boxes...please be careful and monitor them closely.


If you are using a repeating style nest box trap with a holding cage, make sure the cage is shaded and has a container of water in it for the birds. This kind of trap is much safer to use during hot weather.

Dale

[Flumenque]

Hi, Mary. This is a really interesting post, and this strategy might work really well for my current HOSP situation. Neighbors are feeding the house sparrows like crazy and they are invading my martin house. I'm having more luck with a house trap than a repeating trap, so I think this would be a great strategy. I know this is an old post, but a long shot request for you or anyone else who has done this: would you be willing to provide updated or similar links to the pages in this post? I'd love to learn more about this strategy!

[C.C.Martins]

Yes agree took this to heart. Rely on trapping heavily at our satelite martin colony, have 3 trios with spare o doors, two cavities with van erts and two cavities with universal sparrow traps positioned near the colony. 18 spare o doors in all. Hard to find spare o doors nowadays, made most of them myself. Around my home colony, 10 nest box traps with van ert traps up under the eves and two repeating ground traps.
Must say this works great during nesting. Not so good when they are done nest hunting. A blains repeating trap will get the fledges and those hungry in winter. The repeating wire trap with 3 compartments (used to be called the ST1) is a good tool as well and a fantastic addition. A year round trapping strategy will help reduce the local sparrow pressure on the colony when they return. Im not writing to one up, in fact Louise chambers is the best trapper I know...im not close. I am writing because if we wait for them to be a problem during nesting, they will be a problem. Get em all year. Oh and a $hit hot pellet gun. Necessary.

[brent]

Is there danger of catching a Bluebird in those traps? Brent

[C.C.Martins]

Brent, dont know enough about blue birds...if they can get into a 1 3/8 inch entrance then yes.

Good to see Mary's post again. She was very, very helpful

[Flumenque]

Thanks for this. I wish these links were more accessible, as they seem very valuable. Permanent traps for cavities and nest boxes seem like a great tool for when the sparrows are in their cavity-hunting phase (right now for me).

Good to see Mary's post again. She was very, very helpful

What is Mary's story? I see her name around.

Hard to find spare o doors nowadays, made most of them myself.

Have you published/written about how you made the traps yourself? They can be sort of pricey, and I might have a way to snag an old martin house, reduce the hole size, and add a some DIY Spare-O-Doors. The ones for purchase are out of stock and ~$60 as of today.

Matthew

[C.C.Martins]

Hi Matthew,
Mary Dawnsong was a great landlord and friend to her martins and the folks here. Lots of experience, think iv read all her stuff.

As far as the nest boxes, a simple Walmart birdhouse that opens from the front. Or knock one together. Open from front is key, because you have to add 2 screws to the inside door for the van ert trap. Those traps are 11 bucks. Have to watch them like a hawk if you have wrens etc.

No I don't have anything to do a step by step for the spare o door, I had one I bought and just replicated it. Few trial and errors. Bought most of the stuff from western auto. Best bet is look on like for estate sales and if they have martin houses go take a look, found two spare o doors and other traps, houses etc that way.
One of the best ones I made for the trio house was from the universal sparrow trap (round) PMCA sells. I took off the front of the trap, flattened it out and put it on a blank trio door. The hole size is 1 3/8 so just drilled it out. Its a bigger and heavier drop door.

One edit: if you get the van ert trap, darken the red dot on the door. They may see it. Also put a 1 x 1 inch square of plastic or cardboard on the "V" of the trigger arm, when you get one you will see. Tape that onto the v with black electrical tape, gives it more chances they will hit it going in. I even went so far as to glue some white feathers on that 1x1 inch square. My catch rates really went up.
Tom