For the first time in 21 years as a pm landlord, I decided to try putting out some pine straw for my martins a few weeks ago. Today I dropped the gourds for my first nest check and Sevin dusting.
14 out of 18 have nests and there are a total of 30 eggs in my colony so far.
All of the nests consist mainly of pine straw! They apparently like it. That's awesome because of it's benefits of great insulation, helps to keep the nests dry, and helps prevent pests (mites) infestation.
Two of the four empty gourds each had a dead martin in them. They did.not appear to have any injuries that I could see. I've seen this several times before and a few times I've seen injury to the head maybe from fighting or predator attacks. But in this case I have no idea what caused their deaths.
I did clean out the gourds and put some pine straw in the four empty ones.
Hopefully I'll be able to hang the ''No Vacancy'' sign soon!
