Still buried by Ice

[oneidalaker]

Holy cow, the scouts are only a few days away and my colony locations are still buried with 20 feet of lake ice from the December 15th wind storm that I reported a few months ago. Fortunately my Trio Castle and Musselman houses somehow rode on top of the ice mass and the damage to them was minimal. I was able to take them apart and pound out most of the damage. My supergourds were all fine and the only damage was to the porches. Amazingly enough, the house poles which were bolted to the deck rail (and deck) which was transported 200 feet to the west were also only slightly damaged (I was able to replace the bent sections, one each). I'm running out of time to reset the poles so I guess I'll have to set them up closer to the trees. I will have at least one house up for my returning martins so that they won't be tempted to check out the housing elsewhere. I'll try to post some pictures later.
My plan is to remount the Trio Castle with 6 gourds, put up two Trio three story Musselman houses (I purchased two more Musselmans) on a Multi-purpose pole along with 4 gourds and put up my new 8 compartment PVC Casle with 8 gourds on a rack so that I'll be able to offer 50 compartments in all (up from 26 compartments last year. If need be I'll mount them all at locations closer to the trees and move the poles when the ice ments of next year if nesting activity takes place before then.

[Guest]

Don't forget to get plenty of crickets!! Looks like it is going to be very cold there for a while. Maybe the martins will hold off until it gets warmer.
Good luck...................


Lanell

[oneidalaker]

Here's what's left of the ice that wiped out my martin houses

[oneidalaker]

The attached photo shows some of the wind driven ice damage. Gabion stone cribs weighing approximately 32 tons, 12 by 50 foot deck, boat hoist and martin houses ended up 200 feet to the west of where they were before the storm. Just incredible. My only regret is that I slept through the event and was not able to see it happen.

[oneidalaker]

Back in business, One house back up, two to go!!

[John Kendall]

Is there any way you can bring the housing in for winter?