Two Questions For Comments

[birdman in buckhead]

Greetings Fellow Purple Martin Landlords!

The first 3 birds arrived at my place this year on 2/20/26. I've been very busy this winter building a new house on Lake Oconee, and didn't have time to clean out the units for this year's colony. My housing consists of a house with 6 - 12" x 6" units with 2 "super" gourds hanging on each side, and 2 wagon wheels with 6 "super" gourds on each. Every year that I’ve been a landlord, the first arriving birds have always chosen the house units facing my house (the middle unit was almost always occupied first). I believe this is because the other side of the house and some gourds face a tree line that's about 100' away, making them more susceptible to hawk attacks.

As soon as I saw the first arriving birds, I made time the next day to start cleaning out the units. I had not noticed what units the arriving birds were occupying, but based on past experience I started cleaning the house first. Then cleaned 6 gourds on one wagon wheel before running out of daylight. The birds circled above, silent at first, then started squawking at me - probably because they didn't like seeing their housing near the ground. The next day I didn't have time to clean the remaining 6 gourds, but I got home in time to see the 3 birds come in for the night. They all went into the dirty gourds!

Anyone who has ever cleaned out a gourd after purple martins leave after breeding and raising their young knows how funky the gourds can be. I'm curious about why the birds went into the dirty gourds. I thought they wanted clean housing......Comments?

I thought maybe it was for warmth, but the first 2 days were record heat after the birds were back. The next 2 days were bitter cold (mid-20's at night/40's during the day) and with howling winds. This blew my theory about warmth.

Something else to think about: This year I found remains of 2 young birds that died for some reason after or before the family left for the year (I've found many more than 2 in years past). 1 was only skeleton remains and no feathers in the old nest The other was a fully feathered bird with no innards. Why would one have no feathers and the other have all of them?

[LCM]

Mr Terry, good morning.
You have made some startling discoveries.
I’m definitely interested in the more experienced landlords opinions.
I regret that I haven’t been a good landlord over the years, but that has changed now.
These other landlord gentlemen and ladies will answer I’m sure and give insight, they are highly knowledgeable.
May you, as well as the rest of us, learn how better to take care of these sweet babies.

[C.C.Martins]

Hi Terry,
I'll take a stab at it. I honestly don't think they care about spanking clean gourds, in fact when I clean them out, ill use bleach, soap, scrub the big stuff out and if there's a little poop in the entrance so be it. Im kinda anal too, would scrub, scour and have them sparkling. Not so much now, I do clean all the vents though, thoroughly.

Two reasons to clean them for me, I want to make sure there are no mite left overs, second because when they come back I want to greet them with new material.

Perhaps though it wasn't a clean or dirty gourd, perhaps it was the orientation of that gourd. Perhaps if the cold wind is blowing into the entrance, they elected gourds down wind. Just my 2 cents sir.

I would guess those chicks died at diffrent ages?

All in all, I wish you a great season sir,
Tom

[gmmajor]

I have four houses. Two I inherited when we bought our house. They are installed so that they have never been cleaned in over 20 years. I put up 2 more when we moved in 11 years ago. I take them down every year to clean and store them in my boat house mostly in case we have a hurricane. The two inherited houses are hurricane proof.

Anyway, the PMs don't seem to prefer one house over another cleaned or not.

My neighbors have 4 houses and a bunch of gourds each. Neither of them ever take down their PM houses and seem to have the same size flock year after year.

I find a dead PM in the houses almost every year. It makes me wonder what's in the houses that are never cleaned ?

[brent]

Hi Terry and everyone. Just wanted to share that I had a very late nesting last season. Of course they nested in a compartment that had a previous nest that was successful. I was not able to clean the nest out before the parents went in. The chicks looked fine except for one. There were 3. One had unusual looking growths around its eyes and beak. I reached out to a local rehabber that said it sounded like Avian Pox. I never heard of it and can’t be 100% that it was. I looked it up and well, “Ai” send the following reply below.

“Avian pox is a slow-developing, often fatal viral disease causing wart-like lesions in birds, transmitted by mosquitoes or contaminated surfaces. While rare in Purple Martins due to their aerial feeding habits, it can occur, particularly in colonial settings. Prevention involves controlling mosquito populations, keeping nesting housing clean, and eliminating species like House Sparrows that carry the virus. “

I keep my houses clean because I think it helps. Now please know, I am not sure it was Avian Pox. All the birds fledged and it was a successful nesting. Just wanted to share. Brent

[h2y]

If you look to other songbirds, by and large they all make a new nest each litter. Larger birds such as eagles, owls, even woodpeckers do use an existing nest but likely change out the bedding, which is all we are doing.

Houses only here: I use a 4" putty knife to extract the old matted nest & loosen up other matter, then hit it with a 20V cordless blower to get it reasonably clean. No water. Spray the insides with a liquid insecticide before they return, then minimally rebed. That's it. Nature is filthy, spic & span is not a prerequisite but fresh bedding is. They might even appreciate the remnant scent of martins from the prior year?

Another question: how do they find our colonies? Are they so abundant in their migration that the chirping of early returnees attract new ones flying nearby, but how far away? I've never even seen small groups, much less swarms, of them like somebody in Florida reported recently, but how cool would that be? It would make sense if coming across the Gulf they flew in a group, in a geese-like formation, for efficiency, but we're 100 miles inland.

[birdman in buckhead]

Thanks to all that replied. My questions were really unanswerable - unless you're a purple martin! HA!. I was just hoping someone had past experience of what I should expect. More birds have arrived now. If I had to guess I'd say the birds go back to the gourd or house unit they used the year before, no matter if it's clean or not. If that's not the answer then it's no big deal to start with. I'll continue cleaning everything out in the winter because it's easier and cleaner for me to do nest checks, etc. As for what causes young birds to die before the family leaves, I think there may be a health issue with them. If not, they go to purple martin heaven. I won't leave the remains in the units because it's sad and gross and I don't want to see it every time we do nest checks.

I hope all of you have a successful season with many fledglings and no hawk attacks - I hate them and wish I could kill every one of them with my 12 gauge!

[birdman in buckhead]

One more thing:

- My cleaning routine consists of removing the old nest, spraying down the inside and outside with a cleaning solution containing bleach, and flushing everything thoroughly with a water hose.

The colony is now up to 10 birds with more arriving every day. Birds seem to be happy and healthy.