Dumb question-What is a colony?

[CraigMo.]

I live on less than a 1/2 acre. Last year I had a Deluxe Gourd rack with 12 gourds on it and a mss12 grandpa in the front yard. I also had a 16rm S&K barnhouse on the side of my house which all these setups had martins. Would you call this 1 colony, 2 or 3 colonies? That thought just popped into my head. I already looked at the definition on this site and it doesn't really say. Thanks

[Guest]

Craig; I would say the definition of a colony as it would pertain to PMs would be. The housing you put up on your Property which is intended for PMs. I guess you would also have to have PMs living there as well.
I know this sounds simple. I can't wait to see what Steve has to say about this.
Have a Great Day- Jim

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Craig, I would definitely say you had a colony, not several colonies.. I think that when you put up housing, you do not have a colony until you have several martins at your new site, then you have a colony started, your colony will grow larger as you put up more housing and attract more birds. In your case, your colony may spill over and have some move to the front yard, etc. Of course, if you had say 100 acres, you could have several separate colonies separated by several 100 yards, but it is difficult to put numbers on anything

Now you probably would also say that if your neighbor puts up housing near your place, that he also is trying to start a new colony. A colony sort of means you are starting something new at a different place, so your neighbor, even though he is nearby, is starting something at a new place, not at your place.

How does that sound?

[CraigMo.]

Emil that sounds like you are right. I would bet I have 1 colony. Thanks for the responses

[T Seber]

Very good question and it reminded me of something I had been meaning to post about.
What exactly are the definitions of a purple martin colony? Is one pair a colony???? Are two pairs considered a colony??? How many pairs must one have to call it a colony???
Then there are related questions as well. If two neighbors have martins just across the fence from one another, are they two colonies or all part of the same colony?? I feel sure the martins don't know about the property boundaries :-)
I have four clusters of housing, the smallest of these has 32 gourds, the largest over 100 cavities. Three of the clusters had martins last year. Each cluster is 100 yards or so apart. Did I have three colonies or one colony? This makes it a little more complicated than Craig's question.
I can tell you this, the martins react to one another differently in the three clusters. The martins in cluster two do not always react to an alarm scramble in cluster one, but sometimes they do. When it is a false alarm, they often ignore it. When they scramble from all three clusters, you can look out for a hawk, one is coming in for sure.
They are much more attuned to what is going on in their own cluster than the happenings of the other clusters.
I would enjoy hearing your thoughts and observations.

[CraigMo.]

T Seber, My martins also respond and don't respond to each others warnings. My farthest 2 setups are probably only 70 feet apart at the most. But yes when there is a predator around they all take cover or chase the hawk off. And is my colony part of my neighbors colony 100 yards atleast away from mine. His pm colony was there 5years before mine. Or when one bunch takes off for a flight and the other bunch doesn't, is that a different colony. Is this mans way of saying" its mine", kind of like Emil said. This could be getting way to deep for me.

[floridasunshinegoddess]

Oh this is so interesting.... I just have to jump in! I had 4 poles with houses and gourds last year and each one hosted Martins. Now 3 of the poles were approximately 10 feet apart and the Martins would fly back and forth between these 3.

The 4th pole was further away and close to the house. I put it up later in the season trying to give the subbies gourds of their own. I noticed that the 2 pairs that nested there (ASY's) didn't seem to have anything to do with the others. They stayed right on their pole or up on the power lines. So, they seemed like a separate colony.

I actually hadn't given this much thought until now. How very interesting!

[Fred Kaluza~MI]

I say...Let the Martins decide! Imagine you have an area along a bayou in Louisiana where the people's lots were very deep but not very wide, and the owners all each had Martin housing in every lot back near the water, and the occupied string of housing went for several hundred yards along the shore. If the housing at one end of the string got attacked by hawks or owls or snakes or whatever, how far along the chain would the "abandonment" happen? Would every dig-danged-gosh-darned Martin leave and never come back within eyeshot?, earshot? Hmmmmm! Are blood-ties stronger than "neighborly" ties in Martin society?

[John Barrow]

I would like to go back to this post. Like Thurman, I find it interesting and unusual. One we can all share opinions on.

I think colonies are defined by what they are to martins, and by what we want them to be. What they are to us.

To a martin (as defined by us), a colony is two or more active nests in reasonable proximity to one another, so that they know what the occupants by their side are doing day to day. It might be two pairs or it might be a pair and a bachelor male or single female (if there is such a thing). But then you talk about active colonies and those inactive where the above situation once existed but does no more.

I am even more stupified by what a colony is to people. I claim two colonies-one in Corpus Christi and one in Port O'Connor, Texas. The towns are about 100 miles apart.

My Corpus Christi colony has three systems within about 50 feet. I have two lone star systems that host about 30 pairs of martins. Last year I put up a gourd rack (third system) for Louise Chambers beside those. She had 11 pairs last year but each system will likely produce 15 pairs apiece in the future. So is this my colony, our colony or three separate colonies?
I call this "our colony" and her gourd rack is her gourdrack, and the other two systems are my sytems, which she would probably say are ours.

Port O'Connor is more complex. I have 3 systems there. Until 2004, they were all on my property, but that year I moved one about 50 yards down the steet to the Powers property. In addition, I own and maintain a system on the public beach about a mile and 1/2 away. Both are heavily occupied and I have uninterrupted access to monitor each. I report each of those as my own in my totals, although I would say each is OURs, the Power's system belonging to him, as property owner, and to me as system owner and monitor. The public beach property belongs to me as owner and monitor, but also to the people of Calhoun County who witness the system and promote it on their property.

There are also the Gosnell, Adams, Schillings and Aermotor colonies, where I am the mentor, do all nestchecks, have keys to all systems, and have unimpeded right to monitor those colonies. Are they OURs or MINE?
I would say they belong to them.

Now this year, I am removing the front beach system because of safety and weather concerns and moving it to the Aermotor Ranch to add to their colony. It appears to me that this system that was MINE will become THEIRS, even though I own the system, have access to it and will monitor it. But I feel my system will be theirs.

So, I guess there are a lot of inconsistencies in what we believe, like ownership, history, and razzamatazz, many of which I am privy to, but in the final analysis, all that matters is that there are many folks taking care of martins, whether they be mine, yours or ours. I thank them all.

I half-heartedly apologize for the many semantic weirdnesses in this post. Best wishes my friends in this new martin year. john

[Guest]

a colony is what u get for asking ??? on here