My Experience with Clingers this year in Northern Oklahoma

[Guest]

Hello everyone! This is my first post. A couple of things real quick:
This is my third full season as a landlord and I want to say thank you
upfront to everyone who posts on the forum. I have learned so much
from you in the past 3 years! My site has all gourds, 8 Troyers and
24 naturals all with 4" tunnels. After much reading, I decided to convert
everything from "modified" crescents to Clingers this year.
Starlings are around the area and I had to fight off a couple of pairs
last year that breached the crescents. But after that the season was
fairly peaceful. Since I realized the Clingers are relatively untested in
certain parts of the country, I decided to give them a try. Emil in
particular had some very informative posts. Thanks Emil!
Since my martins LOVE porches, I mounted all with porches 2+ inches below the entrance. The first martins started to arrive and they were less
than excited about this new set-up. I watched for 3 days as they tried and
tried but could not get in. As you can imagine I was in full SREH anxiety
mode. So I made the decision to convert all to flush mount with the entrance. The martins took to these with relative ease. During the first few days after the conversion, I noticed the starlings slipped right in and out of the Clingers. This was kind of depressing. I then decided to try some of the naturals without porches. A few lookers but thats it. Tail
props seemed to be in order. So I dropped all the porches to at least 4"
below the entrances to accomodate "propping". Unfortunately the timing
of this coincided with more nasty cold weather moving in. The PM's did not
like it all and starlings still getting in to boot. So after work on Friday, I run home in the middle of 30's temps.,driving wind and blowing rain and
move all the porches back to flush so they could at least get in for the night. As you can imagine, I'm less than confident in the Clinger at least
here in northeast Oklahoma. The starlings are having no trouble getting in.
I do have a S&S controller trap that has caught it's fair share this year.
I've since converted 8 over to "modified" Clingers if you will. More along
the lines of ExcluderII. I'll see how these work out before converting the
rest. Just thought a few people might like to hear about my experience
so far with Clingers. From what I have read, they seem to be working
for some people. Unfortunately, just not for me. At least I can say I
gave it a try. Thanks again everyone!

[Carlton]

THANKS John! Most interesting & informative.

I too am trying the Clingers for the first time. I only have them on gourds with no porches - 3 naturals, 4 Troyer Horizontals (with a cling plate going straight down) and 1 Supergourd. I have watched starlings TRY for the past month and a half now to get in a Clinger and as far as I know none have. We have heavy starling pressure here too.

The martins in my area are just now returning to this area so I can not say one way or the other how the martins will like the Clinger design. The martins in my neighborhood are more used to Trio's with crescent entrances so it will be interesting. Gourds are rare in my town. I can say though that without a porch starlings are not getting in the Clingers in my setup.

It will be interesting to see what happens when more martins arrive.

Carl

[Guest]

The PM's have taken to the clingers at my site like a duck to water and the starlings even tho I don't have many those that have tried have failed to make entry.

I did modify some as I was a little skeptical at first about how the PM's would respond to an entry they were not familiar with. I am now converting back to the original opening on most.



dick

[Kent Justus]

John,

Thanks very much for your feedback. I have wondered about the clingers and was considering trying them. I have used all other SREH designs and have found the Excluder II to be the most effective. I have a lot of crescents, but the Starlings can get through them if they are determined. One SREH that I was extremely disappointed in is the WDC. I watched in horror through binoculars after installing several WDCs as the Starlings passed through them almost as if they were a round hole with no difficulty at all. I hate that I have to use SREHs, but I'm also gone throughout most of the day and can't be here to battle the Starlings when they show up. They have allowed me to have a thriving colony. Thanks again for sharing your experience with the clingers. - Kent / Mt. Vernon, Arkansas

[Guest]

John,

I would sure like to learn more about your setup as well. Are these homemade Clingers? How far is 2+ inches? Are you saying that martins are geting through a Clinger from the Cling position (meaning porch so low it can't be reached from the entrance)? If this is what you are saying, I would like to see this. I live in NW AR so can't be too far from you.

[Julio]

I'm also wondering what your setup was, as far as im aware if the clinger is of the appropriate size about half a mm bigger than the crescent and 2+ inches of the porch it should keep out all starlings.

[db]

I've had starlings entering the clingers with porches also. I don't remember the exact measurement from the porch. My clingers are the white plastic factory made ones.

[Al Denton]

I have seen a starling enter a factory clinger with a porch with traction I mounted 1/4" below the entrance. He also got out without an interior porch ...I moved the porch up flush with the entrance and he was unable to get in. He also was unable to enter an unporched clinger.Also this same starling had no problem entering a crescented SG with factory metal clip on porches.

[Tim Mangan-Kansas]

John:

I also appreciate your update on the clinger. For me, it is far more important to receive the negative feedback than the positive on this new SREH. It would be interesting to know if you made the clinger entrances or purchased them. A photo would be nice.
Tim

To Kent J. or anyone else with experience on entrances. I am once again confused about the excluder entrance. I purchased some Troyer horizontals before the season started and they have the extended tunnel on them with the "Modified Excluder" entrance. Is the Modified Excluder the same thing as the WDC and Conley entrance? Kent, you said the starlings in your area readily breach the WDC but not the Excluder II. I do not have a starling problem at my site but I do want to equip my houses with the best possible SREH openings. In a small new colony, one or two starlings could wipe me out. Which opening is the Excluder II? I could not locate it in the PMCA shop. Can someone clear this up for me.
Thanks

Tim

[Louise Chambers]

Tim,

the link below, to excluder gourds, has a photo (click on it to enlarge) that shows excluder II and modified excluder, which is the same as a WDC/Willie D Conley.

http://purplemartin.org/shop/product_in ... a488c6a80b

I agree all these names and acronyms get confusing! From all the reports we're hearing, one landlord's perfect sreh may not be ideal to another landlord. For instance Kent reports WDC failures while other landlords have had good results with them. Same with crescents and clingers. But by using a combination of a SREH and also having a starling trap with a round entrance hole nearby, you'll be protecting your martins while getting rid of starlings. I hope others will offer some additional feedback for you - but your site is doing great and should grow nicely this year.

Louise

Louise

[Bob Buskas]

Tim, I have been testing 4 different styles of entrances up here in Alberta. The crescent, Triple Nickel (same as WDC) the Private eye, and the Clubhouse. I can't post my web site on the forum due to their policy, but you can Google my web site and take a look at them on the Starling page. I have not yet decided which works the best, but will be getting feed back in the future.

[Tim Mangan-Kansas]

Louise & Bob:

Thanks for your replies. Louise, I saw those four tiny gourd pictures but did not put my cursor on them to know that I could enlarge them.

Okay, from looking at the pictures, the Excluder appears to have flat bottoms on each corner whereas the Excluder II appears to have rounded bottoms in each corner. The Modified Excluder is more of a rectangular shape, which is what I received with my new Troyer gourds. The Modified Excluder is the same thing as the WDC and, or, Conley and the Triple Nickel and none of these should be confused with the Crescent, the Private Eye or the Clubhouse.

Got it

Tim

[Guest]

Thanks for the replies and interest so far.
I'll try to clear up a few things. All of my
clingers are the factory made plates with
the wrap around rain canopy. I'll try to post
some pictures this evening.
After reading posts from landlords in this part
of the country and talking to a couple of other
people, I feel like the starlings may be a little
smaller here. Although my martins were used
to modified crescents, they had not seen the clinger
until now. I think it confused them as well as initially
having to enter from a cling position. It was a double
whammy for them. The initial porch distance was approx.
2.5" below the entrance. After 3 anxiety filled days, I moved
them all to roughly flush. I have internal porches on the naturals.
But unfortunately, the starlings have gotten in with or without
external porches, either flush or lowered. Believe me, I was surprised
to see a starling enter a clinger with a cling plate and no porch.
I'm going to do some measuring of the factory plates with calipers
to see exactly what the opening is.

John

[Guest]

Great update John!

[Donna - TX]

I know some people say they only want to hear the negative feedback but I think we need to hear the positive too.

I have clingers with and without porches; the porches are many different distances from the entrance. Since I have had a major problem with starlings this year I wanted to test different distances (and different entrances). I do not have any porch higher than 1 1/2" (many below that) except flush. I have been leaving the starlings to try to get in the porches before I get rid of them. I have Not had any starlings breach the clinger yet and I do not believe I will because of my observations.

I have had problems with the WDC entrances but that is the only one so far, I have many different entrances I am trying.

[John & Linda - KY]

This year Iwe have a mix of porched crescents and unporched clingers, both purchased and mounted on the lid of cleanout inserts. These are all on natural gourds. This is our first year not to have some 2 1/4" round holes. I have not seen a starling even try to enter either of the SREH's this year, last year they did try to enter the crescents, but gave up quickly. We always had to fight starlings that wanted in the round hole gourds. The clingers are the same type John G. described, fairly hard plastic with the rain canopy. -- John

[Dick Sherry]

John, we are in Tulsa, so not too far south of you, but so far I have not seen a starling get through a clinger. We have three of the new gourds that have the clinger with a tailprop, and I put some of the clinger plates on a homemade wooden house. The clinger entrances on the wooden house do not have porches. All these are manufactured entrances.

Just in the last couple of days, a male martin has gotten real interested in one of the new gourds. He spent a lot of time hanging on at the opening before he finally went in. Now he goes in very easily.

Unfortunately, we have a lot of starlings in our area and almost daily I see them trying to get into compartments on the six different houses we have, but they can't get anything but their head in. We have a mixture of excluders, WDC"s and now clingers. I am wondering if you have a local starling population that is smaller than normal.

We have used SREH for several years now, and they have been a huge help. Some martins get the hang of them very quickly and zip right through the excluders while others have a tough time. I am hoping they take to the clingers, because I think they will give the martins easier access.

Keep those smaller starlings up your way and keep shrinking their gene pool!!

[Carlton]

Feed those small starlings LOTS of pasta. It will fatten them up nicely!

[Daniel Airola]

One source of difference in success of various excluders (alluded to by a few previous posters in this thread) is the size of the birds - both martins and starlings. Stan Kostka and I have just submitted an article looking at the size of western martins, to address the question of whether birds from the coastal states and provinces are a different subspecies from that in the Rocky Mountains. We expected to find that martins from the Rockies would be larger, due to the more severe weather they must endure (i.e., Bergmann's rule - remember from high school biology?). In fact we found no difference in size. We used wing and tail lengths, which is correlated with other size measures.

In looking at comparative data for other populations, we found relatively little information available. The prevailing notion is that all eastern birds are the same size. But we found a paper by our colleague J. Cam Finlay (1971 Wilson Bulletin 83:255-269) that showed that martin at the northern extreme of its range in Alberta are 3-7% larger than those reported for other populations in the east.

Maybe I have missed something, but it seems that a lot of precision is being used in prescribing the sizes of the excluder devices, without paying as much attention to the sizes of the martins and starlings in various parts of the species' ranges. It would be great to get some standardized measurements from different parts of the eastern range, to see if different dimensions are needed on excluders in different areas.