Sparrow Control Question

[Guest]

I have an 8 compartment aluminum martin house with SREHs. This is my first year... I have had several martins stopping by and I now definitely have a SY pair nesting. I have had a terrible problem with sparrows nesting in my martin house. I have constantly torn out nests and now have 2 holes plugged, but I am having to tear out nests in 2 other compartments daily, or more often. Should I plug these 2 holes, or will they just move to another one? I have an ST-1 mounted on the pole and I have a cheap pellet gun that is not working. I am going to invest in another gun soon. Should I try to keep the sparrows in the 2 compartments until I can shoot or trap them, or plug them? My SY pair have been nest building for at least 3 days, and I don't want to plug the holes and have the sparrows move into their nest! Your advice please!

Thank you

[~Patrick~]

rolo27,

By plugging additional holes you might indeed drive the sparrows to invade the martin's chosen cavity. I'd leave them alone until you can get the appropriate nestbox trap or a better gun to do them in. I don't even have any resident sparrows in my colony but have lost 2 eggs this week to them. They are a force to be reckoned with. Good luck.

Patrick

[CUL Lou~Mich]

Rolo27. Do NOT close anymore doors. This will just drive the Sparrows to move. Soon you'll only have two apartments open, and they'll be pecking the PM eggs. What you should do is leave them alone. Give them about a week, then open the house. Take a pin or needle with you. If you find eggs in the apartments the Sparrows are using, poke them. About all you need to do is puncture the shell. That should kill the embryo, but the female should continue to incubate them. This effectively takes her out of the picture for a couple of weeks. Keep checking on a weekly basis, to see if she has relaid. If so, puncture them also. Once you get that better pellet gun, then shoot the male first. Normally, the female will leave. Oh be sure to do this in the afternoon, when the PMs are out feeding. No sense in scaring them off. Good Luck. CUL Lou

[Bob Flam]

Welcome to the Forum

The others are right on as usual, do not plug the holes or you force the sparrows to the martins cavity.

Light them lil sparrow nasties up..trap em shoot em..what ever it takes!

Sadly sparrow and starling control is something you will have to do if you plan on keeping martins. Some areas are worse than others.

Check out the Archives and read up...theres all kinds of good info there. Management, housing, traps...etc

Heres some of a post about a recent sparrow attack from Sigundo.
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Well, Dave at S&K gave me some good advice on the sparrow problem... I think it would have worked. Sadly, when I brought the house down to prepare it, the sparrow had done his work. Any eggs I had are pecked, the martins are now gone.... from both poles

heres a link to the archives... http://www.purplemartin.org/forumarchives/archives.html

bob

[kimball911]

That's the same trap I have and it works great, but here's a little advise. They get wise to seeing the trap in the same place all the time. Move it around, even if it's just putting it on the other side of whatever you have it mounted to. I use the clothes line pole and can just swing it all the way around. I've caught 4 sparrows and 11 starlings in it just since March and as of right now, I'm S&S free......

[robndebby]

Don't plug or remove nest. We are having sparrow problems and do have an excellent pellet gun, but still can't get the things. We pulled the nests out every day, they finally found another hole to nest in. We left that alone and since the trap we ordered hasn't arrived yet, we tried putting a mouse trap in the hole! Well, the doggone bird went in there, tripped the trap, but didn't get caught in it. We watched closely, ready to scare Martins away if they went near that hole. Well, at least we gave it a try, we'll just have to wait for the trap.

Good luck to you.