another bum day in mo

[Leverett Doehring/Mo]

more rain and wind but not as bad, I started feeding Sun. so far @ 1200 crickets, a few hundred meal worms and @ 30 eggs. Still I picked up 5 dead birds and have 10 more in lock up that could not get off the ground, they are getting food and seem to be responding. When I was not feeding birds today I was working on a feed platform, I did put out a temporary which is working but not all birds going to it. I plan to keep feeding until they quit taking from the feeder.
I picked up a dead one about an hour ago so they are still falling, it is obvious they are starving, also finding dead babies on the ground.
BUMMER

[Bob Rogers]

Leverett,
I fear the worst at my colony. As you know, it got up to around 60 today with a little late sunshine. No PM's at all moving at my sight and the wife said she saw none earlier in the day. Hope they are help up togather in several of the cavities, but I fear the worst. Tried scrambled egg over the last several days in their normal egg shell spot --- few takers. I will lower the houses/ gourd racks in another day or two. They were just starting to dawnsing about a week / 10 days ago. Good luck to you.

[Guest]

I lost 4 birds as of this morning.
The sun finally started shining this evening but I saw none flying around.
I feared the worst and lowered the house - and they were all out feeding!!

I have some eggs but no babies, some newbies have 1/2 finished nest in my T-22. I have about 16 nests in various stages I guess...

One more day of this crap and it should be clearing up - finally.

good luck to all.

[~Patrick~]

I'm sure sad to hear about the persistant bad weather and martin fatalities for you landlords up north. I know how attached I get to mine and how disheartening it would be to lose even one. Hopefully, most will make it and you'll have a great season in spite of the difficulties. I'm pulling for you...

Patrick

[John Miller]

I lowered three houses, three sites, in Forest Park today and put crickets on porches. One house that did have 12 pairs had many eggs. No birds to be seen.

This evening late I saw three males come in to the most heavily colonized house that had had the 12 pairs, and they seemed cheerful, but I'm very worried.

John Miller

[Guest]

sky turned partly cloudy about 4:00pm did see martins about the first time in quite a while. The sy male that is staying here was out and about feeding over my pond. Did see alot of insects flying. Keith

[Guest]

I?m almost glad I don?t have Martins yet.

I?ve put out 10,000 mealworms so far just to keep eight Blue Birds alive.

Hang in there people, this crap can?t last much longer...

[Mary Dawnsong]

This method of nursing downed, starving martins has worked well for me.

Wire bird cages damage feathers and should be avoided, according to PMCA.
This alternative can hold 2 or 3 birds at a time:
- Large metal trash can (very inexpensive and readily available).
- Mesh cover (hardware cloth, etc.) on top, weighted down (a tire iron works well).
- Newspapers covering the bottom of the trash can, replace them daily (while trash can is outside).
- Some sort of wooden perch on the bottom for the bird to roost on.
- A small bowl of water.

Release a few live crickets at a time. If a bird catches them on his own and does not have a disabling injury he will very likely recover.
Keep the trash can inside a building at room temperature.
If possible place the trash can outside directly under the martin housing for a few hours during the day -if- the weather is nice and you can be certain no predator gets to it. I find this really helps morale.
If it is not practical to take the bird outside, try to expose it to the sounds of the martin colony - playing Daytime Chatter recording is a substitute.

It takes about 4 days for a starved martin to recover.
By "starved", I mean a martin who has lost so much muscle from lack of food that he cannot fly.
If they catch and eat the crickets on their own, then thats all they need to recover.
An active martin needs about 40-50 calories a day. A large cricket provides about 1 calorie.

There is no sense in trying to release a bird until he is ready to fly strongly. A martin cannot hunt successfully until it is back to full strength!
He will let you know when ready to fly - he'll become noisy and active and try to escape by flying up to the mesh top.

Good luck, Mary

[Craig Haddox]

Leverett, So for I have found 1 dead ASY male on the ground and a nest of 4 newborn's dead. I put out some eggs but theydon't seem interested.

[John Miller]

Craig

Are you seeing birds?

I drove past three houses in Forest Park, St. Louis, at 8 a.m. Had 17 pairs before all this. This AM saw two pairs. One pair looked happy and I think maybe ate crickets out of a gourd tunnel, because the female hopped out and wiped her bill. The second pair, on a house, looked gloomy, ignoring crickets on the porch. When I get a handle on how many survived this I'll post it.

John Miller

[Craig Haddox]

John, this morning I saw a few bird's out. I lowered the houses and found 2 more dead martins 1 ASY male and an SY male. I found about 5 to 8 martins stuffed in a gourd and another 5 to 8 martins in an appartment. They were all alive. Before the bad weather moved in I had around 40 martins around.

[Guest]

Holy Smokes, After reading this thread you guys had me really worried. I thought previously that my PMs were in decent shape through all this weather but I had not done a nest check in 9 days. My thinking being don't disturb birds sitting on eggs in these marginal temps. Normal evening observations showed they were getting at least some feeding time nearly every day. Anyway so tonight I rush home for a nest check and find all is good. The only affect the weather seems to have had was only 1 new egg was laid during the past 9 days. So I've got 1 nest with 5 eggs and 1 nest with 1 egg, and 10 or so completed nests with no eggs. This evening my PMs were especially chatty probably after a day of good eating and knowing the worst is behind them. I bet a lot of nest checks were done this evening. How did they go? My question for the experts though is I thought I had read that the critical temp for PM feeding was 50 degrees? For the guys on this thread weren't temps well above that threshold every day during the crisis? Was the rain the problem or the temps, or the combination? I am really sorry for all who lost even 1 PM. There will be better days ahead.
Kent

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Kent, the 50deg figure has been thrown out there, and it does work fairly good. Here are some other factors:
1)bugs are much more abundant the further north you go, and some of those bugs fly at 35 to 40 deg, so northern martins may be able to survive better because of more bugs being available at a lower temp
2)martins survive better near rivers and large lakes, where the water temps allow some bugs to fly at low temps near the water
3)some power plants have hot water discharges into lakes, and these ar good places for martins to feed in cold weather
4)the amount of rain seems to affect martins, as they may be poor in drought areas. The martins may be stressed in drought areas and cannot survive as long
5)the martins may be stressed after first arriving after the migration
6)high wind reduces the number of flying insects
7)rain reduces the number of flying insects, there are no insects during the slow steady rains, etc

That 50deg figure is simply a beginning, and the conditions other than that also affect the martin survival rate.

[starling shooter]

I had about 8 pairs or so at my residence (4 w/eggs). I counted 14 that came in last night, right at dark, singles, no chatter. Tonight, same thing. There would be no brids at my site during the day. Is there any way the eggs would still be viable...maybe if they were not setting yet?

At least it appears I haven't lost too many adult birds and hopefully the weather warms (as predicted) and they can renest.

Down right depressing but at least it wasn't as bad as other areas.

I think it was just the day after day (2 solid weeks) of poor conditions. All in all, it wasn't too bad just the days kept piling up.

[Guest]

I'm located in southwest MO. I became concerned a couple of weeks ago when the cooler than expected temps began and the rain. I have a new colony, just 5 pair. I've been monitoring them closely. They seem to be doing alringht. Except for a sprinkle yesterday morning, foraging weather has been okay here for the past 4 days as it hasn't rained since last Thursday and winds have been light. My martins have not began egg laying.

[John Miller]

Sunny and warm, finally, and I was greatly relieved this morning to find most martins present and accounted for at three sites in Forest Park, St. Louis. I suspect we've lost a few, and incubation in many nests surely is delayed with likely lowered hatch rate, but most pairs were there and happy -- some even resuming nest building.

[Guest]

John, That's good news. I hope others are finding similar.

Emil, Great insight on bugs! Thanks for that. You reminded me that just 12 miles line of sight SSE from me is a very large power cooling lake for Baldwin Coal Power Plant. I would think that is within reasonable distance for hungry birds to travel for a good meal especially since they probably fly over it on their migration up here. I wonder if there have been any studies done on the feeding range from their home site.

[Don & Danielle]

Hi MO landlords!

My colony took a bit hit over the past few days. I probably had around 40 PMs a week or two ago. But Monday, we picked up 16 dead birds from our gourd rack and backyard.

We still have a few birds around, but the sky seemed so quite tonite. It made me feel kind of sick.

I definitely will try to teach my birds to accept supplemental feeding.

Don & Danielle