Wisconsin folks chime in!

[Mstan]

Thats great SE Wisc. I hope this is the beginning of a strong colony for you.

[Balsam Bob]

Medford, WI here. I've been trying to attract martins every year since 2015. This year I finally have a pair - I think. The SY male showed up on May 17 & seemed to have a mate within a week. The male tried to draw in more birds & it was not uncommon to see several others with him until about a week ago when it got relatively quiet. I would see the SY around but nothing else. So, a week ago, I lowered the house thinking the female had moved on & I was going to put in more pine straw. I found a martin nest in one box & a smaller one in another. When I say a nest, I would say it's more like a bunch of coarse straw with a little bit of mud. I checked again today (6 days later). The pile looks a little larger but has not changed much from a week ago - and does not look like a bowl-shaped nest. So I'm suspicious that they may not stay. I see the male pretty frequently in the morning sitting on the house, flying around, etc and then again toward evening. I rarely see a second martin. If I do see it, the male is usually sitting on the house and the other flies straight into the box and then leaves again without roosting or flying around the yard. Am I doomed to another year with no martins?

[BillieJR]

Thanks, MY FYN 79!!!

Congratulations, SE Wisc hopeful! I hope this is the beginning of something beautiful for you!

Balsam Bob - Don't give up on this pair yet. Good luck! Keep us posted!

As for me - I'm still hanging in there with that lousy sparrow! Beings I can't seem to trap him with the gourd trap and beings I can't see to trap him with the T-14 trap, cuz he's not going to that house - he's sticking with the gourds.....I got my repeater trap out. It's been sitting out near the gourd racks for 3 days now - the sparrow is paying no attention to it whatsoever! I finally broke down and opened up the holes on the T-14. I had them all closed except for the one with the trap on it. Hoping maybe MAYBE a female sparrow will find it or that this guy will check it out and would move to that away from the gourds but this is day 2 of that and the only bird interested in the T-14 is a wren. Didn't take that wren long to find the open holes. I'm sure they are in heaven. The sparrow is carrying nesting material in to a couple different gourds. No female with him, tho. I'm pretty much outta ideas so I'm just keeping as close an eye on him as I can until my neighbor gets back this coming weekend.

I have 3 gourds with eggs in them at last check....4 in two of them a 3 in one of them. 11 total. And I think I've acquired at least one more martin that is staying so I'm not exactly sure how many I have at the moment. 11 or 12, I think.

Good luck everyone!

[SE Wisc hopefull]

Wild morning ... 5 more showed up and took over my cedar house. They hung around from 5am - about 8am. Seemed very committed to staying. If so that would be awesome ... there are 3 others, 2 males and one female with the other house. 2 eggs so far there. This is all new territory for me, so will be interesting to see how the year shapes up. Bottom line is that this late in the season things are still developing.

[BillieJR]

That's glorious news! I hope you get even more - but I'm sure you will be satisfied with what you have already if that's what you actually end up with this year. Next year there will be more.

[Balsam Bob]

I believe the female of my single pair gave up and left. The male has still been coming around but just very briefly the last couple of days. I hear him at 5:30 a.m. so I think he still stays in the house at night. Until about a week ago he was regularly bringing in other martins but I don't see anything like that now. I'm still hoping but I have a feeling this year is a bust. But I learned a few things and will try again next year (it will be the 11th year trying) when I will work even harder to keep the tree swallows away. My location has lots of other birds that don't compete with the martins and I enjoy them and feel lucky to have so many birds in general.

[MY FYN 79]

Appreciate folks jumping in and sharing! Best of luck to you all.

We are normally seeing 5 or 6 martins goofing around here every morning and a pair staying every night. There is some nest building happening in one of the gourds, fingers still crossed we get a completed nest and some eggs!

[MY FYN 79]

Any updates?

We have a very strongly bonded pair. They spend the night here together in a gourd every night, the attached picture is as far as the nest has been built though. No apparent progress in the last few days.

[SE Wisc hopefull]

Looks like my bonded pair capped off at 4 eggs (at least I assume since there are no additional eggs for 3-4 days). Funny, but your nest looks similar to mine. I added pine needles initially, but they added that wood looking pieces. Scratching my head wondering where that came from and what it is ...thoughts?

[MY FYN 79]

Glad you got some eggs!

I don’t think we’ll get eggs this year anymore, but this was the most activity we’ve ever had so we’ll take it!

We put pine needles in our gourds to start out with also, the extra material they brought in here was pieces of corn stalk.

What I find interesting is that your nest isn’t lined with green leaves. Yet a couple pictures up, I posted a martin hanging around here with green leaves in its beak before the nest was built. No green leaves here now though.

We were really hoping this was the year for babies, but with all the Martin activity we had, we now jokingly talk about the “freeloaders” being around and “freeloading”. Bummed out this wasn’t the year, but if you can’t laugh and be thankful for at least all their visiting and spending the night we’d drive ourselves nuts!

[MY FYN 79]

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Scrap that - We have eggs!!

[SE Wisc hopefull]

Super excited for you. Here we have had a horrible tragedy, we had a massive storm blow thru while we were out of town. Only one gourd broke and fell, but it was the gourd with the eggs in it. I returned a day later to the heartbreaking situation. All but one egg was destroyed, which I put back up. Arghhhh ... if i had been home I would have lowered both houses. I was surprised by all the damage in the area that the heavy cedar home and its gourds survived without any damage.

I think I have a mating pair still in the cedar house and will check for eggs there this week.

Keep us updated and send pics in a few weeks of your hatchlings!!

[MY FYN 79]

Very sorry to hear about the house going down and eggs breaking. Fingers crossed the last remaining egg will hatch.

Stay in touch.

[Rick B]

Great to hear of all the success in southern Wisconsin! The weather has been so up and down with too many cool windy rainy days.
Feeding lots of scrambled eggs the past few days.

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[MY FYN 79]

Howdy folks.

How is everyone’s progress?

Sadly, our nesting pair appears to have left with only a couple days left before hatching. Noticed them yesterday morning but not since. How long can they be off eggs before they become not viable?

Pictured is what they left behind.

Still had some visitors today but no interest in the gourd with nest and eggs.

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[SE Wisc hopefull]

Chilton - sorry for that bad news, very strange and I'm sure frustrating to get so close. Here we have hatched 2/3 in our cedar house 7 days ago and 2/3 in the trio house today. So hoping the last egg hatches today/tomorrow. Not a huge colony, but I guess every colony has to start somewhere. Hoping that we can fledge 4-5 this year on 2 mating pairs.

[MY FYN 79]

Congrats!

Glad to see you had some success this year. That must be very exciting! Any fledges yet?

For us, now we need to start resisting the urge to make big changes to our setup. Considering taking down a tree which might be causing them to hesitate. We’ll get em next year!!

[SE Wisc hopefull]

No fledges yet, first nest should fledge 2 healthy chicks around 8/9 and second nest about 10 days later.