It has been two full weeks since the first nesting material brought in by the martins was noted in our gourds. Nine gourds with at least some material two weeks ago, twenty six gourds with at least some material last week.
Today the nest building actiity of the martins was obvious as they descended to the lawns around the poles. Martins are opportunistic in their choice of material, this year with it having been so dry there are fewer grass clippings and more items of trash brought in to build the nest: drinking straws, candy wrappers and the like.
One new material was a grey substance that looked and felt like rubbery old bird droppings. Turns out that it was strips of a sealant of some kind, gathered off of the roof of the school. Perhaps this is evidence of a general shortage of nesting material, I have never seen them use these strips before.
This week twenty eight of our forty gourds contained significantly more nesting material than last week, five gourds appeared to contain about the same scattering of material as last week, and seven gourds remain empty. Even the most advanced nests still appear only half-finished.
Today's nest check results:
8 crescent Big Bos: 6 nests under construction, 2 new nest starts. 0 empty.
8 round-hole Carrols: 4 nests under construction, 1 new nest start, 3 empty or no new material added.
8 crescent Naturelines: 2 nests under construction, 1 new nest start, 5 empty or no new material added,
8 crescent Naturelines w/cling rod: 5 nests under construction, 2 new nest starts, 1 empty.
8 WDC mod. exc. Supergourds: 4 nests under construction, 1 new nest start, 3 empty or no new material added.
Sooo... in this early round the Big Bos are in front with all showing recent activity.
The cling rod Naturelines are next with all but one with recent nesting material. Interestingly the plain crescent Naturelines are at present coming in last, with only three of the eight gourds showing evidence of recent nest building. Which effect may be due to the relative ease of entry into the cling rod entrances.
Carrols and Supergourds neck and neck, with five and five respectively showing recent activity.
Besides occupancy, we compare our gourds on the basis of hatch date (earlier hatches indicate an earlier laying date in that gourd, and perhaps preference) and by the average number of young fledged.
This is still way early, the race could yet go any direction at all.
Mike Scully
School Colony Update: Nest building underway
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Guest
Very intresting, indeed. It would seem to me that all the gourds would fill about the same rate. Do they prefer "larger" gourde 1st? I only have SGs(6) and two NH metal houses. It seems here, the gourds fill up, then the SYs get the left over houses. As of tonight, all but 2 SG are filled- 1 mty, 1 ASY male. The houses have 3pr and 2 single ASY males.
Keep us up to date!
Chuck
Keep us up to date!
Chuck
Chuck.... I prefer the egg hatch date as a yardstick of how fast the gourds fill (provided they don't stay empty of course). Nest initiation/completion is hard to pin down, and I dislike rooting in the nest material to find hidden eggs. The hatch date on the other hand is usually possible to determine to within a day or two, and really is a pretty good measure of the timing of the nesting cycle.
In the previous two years our Big Bos filled up behind our Naturelines and Supergourds and had, on average, a hatch date four or five days later. Things may be different this year.
Care must be taken when drawing conclusions from such small sample sizes (in this case only eight gourds of each). But we have offered gourds as large as Supergourds and Naturelines and even a Whistle gourd, and gourds as small as Carrols and little Bos, and have yet to notice a consistent preference correlating to size.
Naturelines crescents with cling rods have been the preferred gourd by a narrow margin over the last three years, I am very interested to see how our plain crescent Naturelines do. We have not offered them this way before, although I have it on good authority they work just fine. We DO know that starlings sometimes get in our cling rod version.
To put this all in perspective, our sample sizes are so small that most of our findings are not statistically significant. Meaning a Statistician might conclude that for all we know, one gourd is much like another.
For example, although only three of our plain crescent Naturelines are showing definite evidence of activity, one of these holds a more complete nest at this point than any other gourd on the racks. This sort of thing is pretty typical.
Mike Scully
In the previous two years our Big Bos filled up behind our Naturelines and Supergourds and had, on average, a hatch date four or five days later. Things may be different this year.
Care must be taken when drawing conclusions from such small sample sizes (in this case only eight gourds of each). But we have offered gourds as large as Supergourds and Naturelines and even a Whistle gourd, and gourds as small as Carrols and little Bos, and have yet to notice a consistent preference correlating to size.
Naturelines crescents with cling rods have been the preferred gourd by a narrow margin over the last three years, I am very interested to see how our plain crescent Naturelines do. We have not offered them this way before, although I have it on good authority they work just fine. We DO know that starlings sometimes get in our cling rod version.
To put this all in perspective, our sample sizes are so small that most of our findings are not statistically significant. Meaning a Statistician might conclude that for all we know, one gourd is much like another.
For example, although only three of our plain crescent Naturelines are showing definite evidence of activity, one of these holds a more complete nest at this point than any other gourd on the racks. This sort of thing is pretty typical.
Mike Scully