So Let Me See If I Understand This....

[Joe Zorn]

According to recent discussions:

A. Sparrows prefer porches, and will go, instead, to a nearby trap, BB house, or even a ragged old aluminum Heath if it has a porch.

B. Starlings want 6 x 12 room cavities. Period, and will fight any other birds for a good location of these dimentions. Starlings have no use for a 6 x 6 cavity.

c. Purple Martins will do just fine with 6 x 6 cavities, except for the predator problem.

Wow, isn't that what we were doing for so many years before all these new innovations? And now we spend endless time, money, and have heartaches and headaches supplying things that we did not need only a few years ago, for the same results.

Someone straighten me out again. I am wandering off to the domain of the unconvinced again.

Joe

[Bernie Nikolai]

Joe, you will find some interesting reading here: Go to the main home page of the PMCA. Then go to the Purple Martin Update Magazine. Lastly read these two articles:

1/ 8(4) January 99 "Relative Breeding Success of Purple Martins Nesting In Various Types of Housing"

2/ 4(4) December 93 "Inadequacies in the Design of Purple Martin Housing"

[Guest]

My thoughts:

#1 - I have had HOSP go into BB boxes (without a perch) and unporched natural gourds. I don't believe that they care about porches at all, just want any available space.

#2 - When I bought my home, there was a small active martin colony in an old Heath house with small rooms. I didn't know anything about martins and let the house get run down. Starlings moved in and, I'm sorry to say, raised several broods over the years. They were not at all offended by the smaller cavities.

#3 - I don't have any 6"x6" cavities, so I can't speak from experience, but others have reported apparently healthy PM colonies in that type house.

While some current advice can be conflicting and no one has all the answers, I don't think the solution is to move backwards, but to keep trying to improve on the advances made so far and keep on thinking up new ideas.

my 2 cents' worth,

[Sigundo]

I can't speak for martins, as I've only decifered a small portion of their language. e.g.: chirp chirp CHIIIRP chirp tweet = The fat guy with bad taste in shirts is messing with our home again.

I'm still working on the other martin vocalizations.

But here is my take on your question:

#1 If i have a choice between taking the steps (no porch) or the escalator (porch), I take the escalator. Its easier and I accomplish the same goal. (this may also be related to my weight, but not conclusive).

#2 I'd rather sleep on a King size bed (6 x 12) than a double bed (6 x 6), but when I'm tired, either one will do.

#3 You can raise a family of five in an efficiency apartment, but everybody will most likely be happier (and healthier) in a tract style ranch house and nice yard to run (flap wings) in.

I fully believe that if all you can offer purple martins is 6x6, porchless, round holed, no frills housing (and will manage S&S) by all means do so. If you can provide better housing/gourds (and STILL manage S&S), do that as well.

P.S. I altered my 20 roomer S&K to 9 rooms (doubled the room size and nixxed the attic, for those that see the obvious math discrepancy), however, due to the design, the two lowest, center rooms cannot be resized to larger than 6x6 (or is it 6x8?) because of the aluminum pole in the center (well, you CAN cut around the side of it, but you lose some significant stabililty of the walls). Guess which two rooms were FIRST to be taken.. yep. the little center ones. And last year, of the enlarged rooms, 4 of 5 nests were still built in the front half (original room) but I did notice the young in the back room on my final pre-fledge inspection flapping and moving around, enjoying the space.

[Joe Zorn]

Thanks, Bernie.

I just read both of these articles again. Good points in both. I had previously seen where, many years ago the PCMA was endeavoring to prove WADE wrong in his attack on other manufacturers and gourds as PM housing.

I still like to see some of the thoughts of the others.

Why do we build the rooms bigger, if the Starling is going to cause more problems than any of the previous predators did with smaller rooms?

Why do we put porches on them if sparrows are drawn to them, only to break the eggs and kill babies, then leave again before the PM parents return.

I got out the ol' Daisy pellet rifle, and sharpened my marksmanship skills, only to find that we have hundreds of sparrows here. I could NEVER take out all the sparrows in a hundred years.

I have a Winn Dixie 500' behind my house. Have you ever looked up behind the big red letters making up the store name above the entrance ..W-I-N-N D-I-X-I-E ? There must be a hundred nests up there. And every cubby hole, sign and lighting fixture in that shopping center has nests.

I envy those who live in rural areas and have effectively taken out the sparrow population via traps and marksmanship. But I bet for the most part, they don't have a lot of barns, feed storage buildings, tractor sheds, etc. either.

I admit. I am not a PM purist, as many here are. I have neither the physical ability nor the funds to keep up with installing all of the commercially available products. Neither am I the old fashion PM landlord who puts a house up and lets the martins take care of the rest of the season on their own.

I am thinking that with owl guards and predator devices on the poles, the martins are far safer...without drawing the starlings and sparrows to their homes via our innovations.

I still don't quite know how to handle the snake problem, without the snake nets. I am more afraid of snakes than my birds are, so any snake caught in a trap would effectively make that trap it's final resting place.

I just have to hope that the 4' of 6" PVC is effective, as I have a deep and wide wooded ravine between my back yard and that Winn Dixie. It goes on for a couple of miles between subdivisions. Lots of critters there. Coons, opossums, snakes, (wild) cats, and a hoard of birds of various kinds. Probably owls too. Maybe hawks.

My point is....LOTS of Martin adversaries. At what point is enough, ENOUGH?

[Joe Zorn]

Dr. Kathi,
Thanks for the comments.

I had Martin houses up for about 25 years...up to about ten years ago.
All have always been 6 x 6 x 6 rooms. 8, 12, 18 and 24 room structures. I NEVER once had a starling problem. Not a single one. When I discovered the PCMA forum this year, after construction a couple of houses, I could not imagine what kind of bird the starling was. Had to look it up on the net.

I did have an occasional sparrow, but I learned that if I kept the holes blocked till about the middle of March, the Martins would take over and the sparrows were usually history for the season.

Now that I've modified my new houses to 6x12, I see starlings. No Martins..but starlings and sparrows galore.

No martins yet. Worried about that. Very unusual for South Louisiana. We tend to think of the two devastating storms of August and September last year...Katrina and Rita. But we don't often mention Hurricane Cindy, that struck land here about July 5th or 6th. Right at the time that our fledglings were coming from their nests, and the martins were beginning their migration south again. I believe it was by far the worse on the PM's than the other two. Most of our birds should have been gone by late August.

Glad to make your aquaintance. Thanks for your "two cents worth". You seem very well informed, and I look forward to hearing a lot more from you.

Sigundo,

I have not quite got the martin vocalizations down yet. But I don't think "Fat guy with wierd shirts" is quite what they are saying here. More like, "Idiot with too much time on his hands!"

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

I have 216 gourds hanging, and all except about 8 are full. I have some large gourds (the last to be taken), some medium sized gourds, and quite a few 9in natural gourds.

Here are my ideas: The type of housing means very little to a martin, they are only interested in two things, that is raising babies, and safety (they want to survive). They will take any kind of housing if you provide them with a safe place, mostly free of predators. If the predators start harassing the martins, your colony will not fill up. If the predation gets bad, you will have less martins or no martins.

Some factors are the amount of open space around your housing. If you have open fields surrounding your place, that helps a lot. On the other hand, if you have a forest around you, you may never get martins.

If you keep away the starlings & sparrows, have your housing in an open area, and I use many ideas to reduce owl predation, ( the hawks have mostly all left our area), and the predator barrier on the poles, then your odds increase tremendously regardless of the housing.

There are so many ideas floating around, and though they may help a tiny bit, they mean nothing in most cases in my part of the country (they may help in yours). I am talking about stuff like mirrows, Dawnsong, decoys, mud smeared on the entrance, entrance type (I must admit that a round hole may help attract the first few pairs), wood vs plastic, gourds vs houses, small cavities vs large cavities, adding nesting materail, different types of nesting material, etc

My most recent ideas concern the martins security. When I build a gourd with a side entrance, the martins always build their nest so they cannot be seen from the entrance. I think this is a very important step that has largely been ignored for way too many years, and I will continue to try to make the gourds so the owls cannot see the martins. Regardless if you have owls or not, the martins will love that security feature on the housing. R.C. (and others) made their housing with baffles, and I really do like that.

As an analogy, how would you like to have a bear looking at you thru an open window next to your pillow on the bed while you are sleeping (especially if he can reach you)? This is what an owl must look like to a martin..

[Joe Zorn]

G'morning Emil,

Man, you have stated my thoughts better than I did.

Now my question is: How to construct an effective owl guard on wooden houses, without using the wire fencing that makes the house look like Folsom Prison.

Has anyone had any luck with a tunnel entrance, say 2" or 3" long. If so, what ID and material did you use?

What other types come to mind?

Joe

[CUL Lou~Mich]

Well, for several years now, I tried to do it the PMCA way. Large apartments, Large gourds, etc, etc. I've been seeing less and less of the PMs visiting, the more I changed. Therefore, this year, I'm going back to the Trio at 6x6x6 inch. I'l be putting a couple of mirrors on, plus I'll be keeping the North Star up. I'm also going to be cutting holes (Round) in a couple of small gourds. Still undecided on the Dawnsong, and Daytime Chatter playing. Well, part of that is because it ain't working right. (Yes, I do know how to put them in as scheduled tasks. All settings seem to be correct. They just won't work right.) Anyway, that's where I'm at for this year. Hopefully, the Eastern King Bird will find another home. ha ha. CUL Lou

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Joe, a good way to build wooden houses for owl protection is to attach large porches, lets say 3 to 4 inches wide, and then attach 1/4 or 3/8 in dowels every 2 in. It looks really good, the martins can easily enter a 2in opening, but it keeps the owls far enough away so they cannot reach the martins.

I have all tunnel entrances on my gourds and the martins seem to really like the tunnel entrances. Last year I had an experimental chalet, the martins wouldn't use it, I attached a tunnel, and they used it immediately. Of course 1 instance is not enough to be statistically correct, but I do think that they like tunnels on houses. On the chalet, I removed the WDC entrance from it, and attached it to a tunnel, so it still was the same SREH

[roblrich]

According to recent discussions:

A. Sparrows prefer porches, and will go, instead, to a nearby trap, BB house, or even a ragged old aluminum Heath if it has a porch.

Joe

HOSP's prefer houses Joe. I don't think they like the sway of the gourds if they have their choice. They also like BB Boxes, as again, they are stationary and do not sway. Now if they do not have the choice of any of those, they will choose a porched gourd over a non-porched gourd any day!

Now then, if they don't have a porched gourd, they will nest in non porched gourds if they have no other options. But one would be wrong IMO to say they do not have a preference. I have observed their preferences as I have plenty of them to watch.

But in the other thread, my 'main' point was not that the porched gourds were more attractive to HOSP's than non porched gourds (although I do think this), but it was impossible to place insert traps in porched gourds to rid ourselves of them.

One might then say, why did I want to go with round hole gourds over crescents w/o porches. Well, that is just a personal preference as I would rather not use crescents unless they have porches as I as everyone else see martins struggle with crescents when learning them, and a porch does help.

But it is hard for me to picture a pair of martin parents with up to 7 fledglings in a 6x6" compartment. I would be kicking out some of my own children if I lived in a situation like that.