Purple Martin Update...April 1, 2006

[Steve Kroenke]

Purple Martin Update?April 1, 2006

At 5:13 am this morning, April 1, 2006, it began! An ASY male martin left his nest in my colony, ascended into the early morning Louisiana sky, and emitted the dawn song. Only one male made the flight this morning, but this is the beginning and soon huge numbers of male martins will fill the sky above our large colonies and form a giant avian choral society! It is awesome and a large mass of dawn singing males, both ASYs and SYs, will form and serenade our colonies until the light of dawn. I love hearing the dawn song, particularly when many male martins are involved. Dawn singing will often continue until late May in our colonies.

Prior to this male?s flight, many males were emitting nocturnal vocalizations, particularly the territorial/mate reinforcement gurgling song that ends in the ?kreek?. Female martins were chortling, too, and they try to imitate the males with a feminine version that sounds more like a squeaky gurgle.

The first SY male martin that I?ve seen this season made his appearance today and timidly flew around my housing. More SYs males will be arriving over the next few weeks.

I believe I am either at 100 pairs of martins or very close now, as huge numbers continue to pour into our area. Bob and I probably have just over 200 pairs of martins at this time and there is no end to the continued exodus of martins to our colonies. The sky will be black with martins when they all bolt and climb! It appears our colonies are ?ground zero? for the martin activity in this immediate area. I believe I will be able to declare super martin colony status (100 pairs) any day now!

My natural gourds that maximize vertical/horizontal depth continue to be the most popular cavities in my colony. This includes the vertically deep woodpecker gourds, the horizontals with offset holes cut in the necks, and the funnels with or without the PVC extenders. However, my plastic Troyer horizontals are doing well, too, so I will no doubt be using more of them next year. My multi-compartment houses are the poorest occupied and this is because possessive martin pairs control numerous cavities.

Though there are many martins, nest domination behavior by possessive males and females continues to be the number one deterrent to newcomers. We still have many vacant cavities which are being dominated, particularly in the multi-compartment houses. The gourd racks have some domination issues with a pair of martins controlling maybe one or two additional gourds. This territorial behavior will gradually subside in intensity after the females finally select a cavity and start nest building. Once the eggs are laid, most pairs become involved in protecting them and are not nearly as dominant.

I have pre-built nests in my housing, but the martins are still adding some material, particularly leaves which I place under the gourds and houses. My pre-built nests do reduce the nesting building time greatly.

During nest building, the female martins are subjected to continuous sexual assaults by the males. Male martins readily rape females and in our large colonies with a preponderance of ASY males, the intensity is greatly amplified. Sometimes a female is injured and even killed when a mob of males attacks her. This may occur when a female is hurled with great force against the side of house/gourd by a male which hits her violently from the back. Other times, the males just pounce on a female and drown her in a writhing mass of assaulters. She may be so weakened and traumatized by the attack that she appears almost catatonic and sometimes can?t fly. One year Bob tried to save a female martin from a group of males but they killed her. One of her eyes was pecked out as the males repeatedly raped her on the ground.

This is fourth week that I have not seen a single starling flying around our colonies. I wait patiently with a loaded 12 gauge shotgun and pellet rifle, but they are never fired! I did shoot one ?scared? starling about four weeks ago that was flying around the area and appeared to be totally intimidated by the many martins covering our housing.

April is the main month for the migratory merlins and Accipiter hawks to pass through our area on their way north to their breeding grounds. We live on a raptor interstate flyway it seems! Last season, I saw three beautiful peregrine falcons and two made unsuccessful low level attacks on my colony. The martins easily out maneuvered these falcons which are much more lethal stooping on their prey from higher altitudes.

In June and July, the resident Cooper?s hawks will no doubt prey extensively on our martin fledglings. We lost MANY fledglings in 2005 and I would sometimes witness five attacks a day. Great horned owls also caught MANY fledglings which roosted on the exposed gourd crossbars and house perches in our colonies. I would find plucked martin feathers in little piles all over our closely mowed lawns. And I would also find great horned owl feathers under the housing. Owls will often lose feathers when hitting martin housing to grab fledglings.

Stay tuned for more martin updates from northwest Louisiana.

Steve

[Guest]

Thanks for the update, Steve. I'm looking forward to the SYs hitting our area in mass in a week or two.

Shel

[Guest]

Steve...your posts are a great resource for martin behavior and housing design success. Thank you for sharing....your posts are always welcome and appreciated.

Sue
City by the Sea, TX

[John Atteberry]

Hello Steve,
Wow!!! 100 Pairs Soon!!!! I'm moving out by you in a week, about 5 miles from you going south! I'll see you there soon! I had a Cooper's Hawk attack a female and was successful! He came out of the woods that were 100-150 feet away and made an attack over the lake and grabbed her! She was a new martin so she didn't know what was going on I guess! The good news is she wasn't one of mine! But could of added to my colony! It was very foggy that morning about 7:30 A.M. on a Wednesday! So I had a feelin that a hawk was going to come in and make an attack! They were real noisy that morning! Haven't seen a hawk until today about 11:00 A.M. but he flew from across the lake and landed in a small tree but look like it was a new hawk because it wasn't attacking anything! He saw me and flew away with the martins chasing after him or her! Still have 13 pairs of today! Thanks for the great writing! John!

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey John,

Martins are pouring into our colonies. There are hundreds of martins in the sky it seems! SYs are now arriving and soon the competition between the "old" and "young" will really heat up!

Accipiters like to use dim light and foggy conditions to get real close and greatly increase their chances of a kill at martin colonies. Even open sites are not immune. Your hawks are probably migrants and should be gone by early April.

However, Cooper's hawks nest in the Pensacola area and will predate martin colonies during the spring and summer. These hawks really like to hunt the fledgling martins, as this prey is easy meat.

Your colonies continues to do well and you still have all of April and probably about half of May to attract more martins.

Continued great success, John.

Steve

Sue/Shel,

I am glad you like my updates. I try to keep folks posted on a weekly basis because our martin numbers may indicate that more will be heading north of us. Plus I always enjoy sharing interesting aspects of martin behavior that I observe. This may encourage other folks to observe their martins closely and see behaviors that are overlooked or are just plain interesting!

Thanks and good luck with your colonies.

Steve

[Donnie Hurdt MN]

Steve ,I agree with Sue about you keeping us posted about your coloney. These posts help me keep me going on getting martins at my site, feel free to share with us anytime!

[Davlyn]

Hello Steve,
What a lot of my martins, I have heard talk about the dawn song I even bought the tape but I really know nothing about it. Could you explain to me just what the dawn song is why they do this and just when does it start? I have been watching as 1 female has started going in
another compartment taking the nesting material out of that compartment
and taking it into hers, I thought that was pretty smart.
And as aways great post!

[Guest]

Wow. Those poor females! I always find your updates interesting, Steve. Thanks for writing them and sharing them with us.

[Guest]

Steve, Like all others I just love your posts - only one problem with them: they are usually soooo long. One almost has to schedule time to read-appreciate them to their fullest.
I you ever decide to publish(unless you have already done it) a book with all you articles put me down for a copy or two.

Now if only you would stop posting about round holes......

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey Dhurdtmn,

I will keep folks posted! We are apparently on a major migratory flyway for songbirds and raptors. This may be one reason why there are SO MANY purple martins in this area. I have never seen anything like it. Hope you attract many martins this year. Good luck.

Steve

Hey April,

The dawn song is emitted mainly by ASY and, yes, some SY males in the early morning hours, usually beginning around 4:00 am and continuing until around 6:00 am. In my colonies, the most intense time is between 5:00 and 5:30 am. I have documented a number of times where SY males dawn sing just like the ASYs and I once watched an SY male sit upright in his natural gourd and just pour out his dawn singing heart. While many males dawn sing, I don?t believe all do consistently. It is theorized that males dawn sing to attract migrating SY female martins for mating, as males are notoriously unfaithful to their mates during the breeding season! All male martins want to spread their genes to as many females as they can. Of course, no one knows for sure why males dawn sing, but it seems reasonable that they would do it to attract more females. All the dawn singing in my colonies correlates perfectly with the arrival of the first SYs, so there may be some validity to the theory. I believe the most consistent and intense dawn singing is performed in the larger colonies. There are just more males in these colonies.

Oh, those martins are nest material thieves! I have seen the same things happen and the males will do it, too. They love to pull out leaves and pine needles from other martins? nests.

Thanks for sharing your observation about the martin thief! Hope your colony continues thrive.

Steve

Hey Becky,

Oh, it is just awful around our colonies right now! Some poor females are harassed and driven to the ground. Others must be quick to grab a leaf from the ground and then try to make it back to the nest before the males attack. The most males I have seen chase and assault a female has been around 10 and this female was almost killed before I rescued her. It is during nesting building and prior to the females laying eggs that most of the sexual attacks occur. It all relates to mating and spreading the male?s genes.

Glad you like my posts. Good luck this year.

Steve

Hey Stan,

I am glad you like my stuff though it is lengthy at times. Maybe if you find something of interest you can copy and paste the article in a word document for later reading. Since I am retired, I do have a lot of time on my hands so perhaps some day I can organize all this stuff into a coherent document. I haven?t done it yet and just have numerous articles stored on my computer.

Now about those round holes?I use them and they serve me well. So I have to be honest about it and share the information. We also use srehs in our satellite martin colonies. Both work well for our martin colonies and I like to have a flexible dualistic approach to purple martin colony management. I try to use ?good science?, objective analysis, and something I call situational colony management. I base my decision to use either round holes or srehs on what is happening at a particular colony location relative to starling competition issues and not on what is occurring at other sites. So, this approach has been a winner for me and my personal round hole colony is THRIVING and starling free. I am a maverick and independent thinker!

Hope you have a great martin season.

Steve