Two Photos Of Purple Martins Swarming Around My Colony

[Guest]

I noticed from your picture that youu don't have any of the plastic houses. I put up a plastic house to replace a metal house and not ONE bird went inside the plastic house while all my other housing filled up. Do you have any experience with the plastic houses, and if so should I continue to try to get birds in it or replace it with a metal house or gourds??

[Steve Kroenke]

Hey Claude,

No, I don't use the plastic multi-compartment houses and prefer aluminum which lasts longer and is opaque. Wood is good, too, particularly cedar. I would probably never use the multi-compartment plastic houses currently offered to the public. Some of the plastic houses are translucent; that is, the plastic is not dense and allows sunlight to penetrate, causing heat build up. This is the "greenhouse effect". Also, translucent houses may be rejected by martins if too much light penetrates the nesting chamber. The female martins, in particular, prefer their eggs/young to be in a more secluded environment and not visible to predators. Check your house to see if it is translucent. Does sunlight shine through the sides? Do the sides look like they are "lighted up"? Do the compartments look like they have a light turned on inside when in direct sunlight? If so, then that could be a problem.

I do use plastic gourds: Super Gourds and Troyer Horizontals. Both these artificial gourds are largely opaque and well liked by purple martins in my colony.

If you are looking for quality aluminum houses, I would suggest one of the following: Trendsetter, Lone Star or Trio. I use all these and they are currently loaded with purple martins. I bought one Trio Castle in 1965 and that house is still standing though not at my current location!

If I were you, I would replace the plastic house with one of your metal houses or gourds. You have a successful history with those styles. However, other folks have had success with the plastic houses and they may have painted the insides of certain brands to block out the sun. If your plastic house is opaque, then it just may take a while for the martins to adjust to it.

Steve

Tom,

I will be happy to send you some of my photos. I don't believe you can send attachments via the Forum? However, if you will send me your regular email address via a private message, I will send you these photos.

Steve

[Guest]

They have go to be extremely loud

[Guest]

Steve...what a collection of photos! It must have been really something to hear them as well!!!!

Sue
City by the Sea, TX

[Steve Kroenke]

Jwertz,

The vocalizations of all these martins are indeed loud and can be heard a long distance from the colony. All these vocalizations and associated activity attracts Accipiter hawks and merlins which are passing over. I would like to see how our colony sites look when looking down from several hundred yards up in sky!

Steve

Bob,

You are a good counter! I didn't even attempt to do it! My photo missed a number of martins higher up and, of course, those still in their nests.

Steve

Sue,

Thanks! Now, if I could just take photos as well as Nicole, Ron and Fotoman! My digital camera has a simple mode for "dummies" like me and I just press the button when it says "fire away"!

Yes, there is a "Whole Lotta Vocalizing" going on in our colonies!

Steve

[Guest]

Steve, I wonder if the infanticide is a result of colony population saturation. In Tennessee, with 90 gourds and 44 productive nests last year, and including prior years, I've never seen this behavior. In your case and at other heavily populated sites, when the competition becomes too intense, they resort to rude, desperate, despicable behavior---just like people! Perhaps you should rename your colony New York City South.

In the past, with the low occupancy rates (though its way up this year), the unpaired SYM were a nuisance for the established ASY pairs, but they were easily driven away after a short confrontation or quick peck. The territorial squabbling is minimal as well--probably because nest sites aren't at a premium.

In looking at your photo, I see you have a few THGs with round openings and tail props. Have you perceived any preference for/against the THGs with tail prop plates instead of the little aluminum porch that's used on the half-moon openings?

[klcretired]

AWSOME STEVE....JUST AWSOME!!!!!!!!

[Steve Kroenke]

Chuck,

I believe the infanticide behavior by primarily SY and to a lesser extent ASY males is mainly commited by males that are trying to secure mates/territory later in the breeding season. I also believe that the population size of a martin colony relative to the number of available cavities influences the intensity of infanticide behavior as you indicated.

I have seen bachelor SY males try to remove tiny martin nestlings from my smaller colonies even though there were unoccupied gourds/house compartments available. These were later arriving males.

Super martin colonies function as biological sponges and soak up huge numbers of martins in a specific area. So all these bachelor SY males where time is running out to breed may try to usurp the nests of established martin pairs at these large colony sites. There are large numbers of females at these super colonies though they are active mothers. However, the bachelor males may still try to "win them over" and they can only do this by eliminating the nestlings.

And a colony does not really have to be super large. If all the cavities are filled with ASY and SY pairs, then any arriving bachelors that are actively trying to find a mate and territory may resort to infanticide.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this sensitive subject. Sometimes starlings and house sparrows are not the culprits when tiny martin nestlings are found under the housing or mysteriously disappear. Those bachelor males, primarily SYs, may have done the dastardly deed.

I only use round hole Troyer Horizontals and have never used any porched ones with crescents. So can't comment on any differences in attractiveness between the two styles. I do know that many folks use Troyer Horizontals with porches and srehs and the martins do fine in them.

Steve

Hey Kenny,

Thanks man! You have a great martin colony site, too!

Steve

[Guest]

Hey Steve!
Great photos of your colony site. Truly an amazing sight to see. Thanks for sharing the pictures with everyone.

And as a matter of fact my colony site is almost identical in size to yours.............minus several hundred martins

[Steve Kroenke]

I thought folks would like to see what my colony looked like back in late April. I re-activated this older posting with two photos of a huge swarm of martins above part of my colony. Some of the housing is not in the photo.

During the mornings and at roosting time, a similar scene has been taking place with many martins visiting, but those numbers are declining each day and evening.

Last week, I honestly believe Bob and I had over 1000 martins coming in to roost. It was unbelievable and almost looked like a pre-migratory roost site!

Steve

[KathyF]

Steve,
How do you manage so many nests / martins?

That looks like a full-time job.

So, are you in the nest replacement or the Sevin camp?

[Steve Kroenke]

Kathy,

I am a retiree and can spend a lot of my time studying martin biology and behavior at my colony. It is almost a full time job, so I don't really feel retired at all! I am amazed at how much time I spend working with my martin colony. But it is a labor of love and I don't complain about it. However, I am trying to cut down on the maintenance aspects by using more SuperGourds and Troyer Horizontals rather than large numbers of natural gourds. A lot of my time goes into "security/protection" as we have MANY migratory Accipiter hawks and merlins that make several attacks daily for part of February, all of March and April and the first of May. I maintain a visibility and actively chase the raptors out of my colony. Then I must try to keep the resident Cooper's hawks at bay and stop them from predating our martin fledglings directly at our colonies in June and July. I don't like this aspect of martineering and it is stressful for the martins and me.

I use small amounts of Sevin as necessary, primarily at the beginning of the nesting season and it works to keep most parasites under control. I have on occasion done a few nest replacements for late nesters.

So I am not really retired and all those martins keep me busy!

Steve

[KathyF]

I imagine that it is stressful to try to keep the aerial predators away as you are in a migratory path. Looks like you've been pretty successful though.

Do you have any trouble with owls? With all that activity around your site, I'm sure it's a predator's buffet table just waiting. I think I read somewhere that the Trendsetter has a deep porch that helps with the owl problem too - is that correct?

[Steve Kroenke]

Kathy,

We have both barred and great horned owls over here and they will predate any martins that roost in the open on house porches/gourd crossbars.

However, our owl problems have not been bad this year. I always go on "owl patrol" in the early mornings beginning around 4:00 am during the early part of the nesting season when the male martins are emitting many nocturnal vocalizations. My prescence keeps the owls away for the most part. Also we use vertically and horizontally deep cavities which greatly protects martins that stay inside their nests.

Most owl predation occurs when the martin fledglings roost in large numbers on gourd crossbars and house porches. We do lose some, but not many and my guarding may have conditioned the owls to stay away from my colony for the most part during the night and early morning.

The Trendsetter does have a wide wrap around porch with dividers. I don't know if such a porch would help deter owls, but the porch could offer a "baffle effect" and help keep the owl from grabbing the entrance hole area. Also, the compartments have an offset entrance hole where the martins enter then hang a sharp 90 degree turn. This would also greatly reduce owl predation inside the nest.

Steve

[zboggess]

Steve,

That's terrific! More for next year! You must have a great camera to catch such a great shot.

Looks like you have porch dividers on your Trio Castle.

Where and how did you find the dividers them and how did you install them? I would like to try it. You can Email me directly if you wish.


Thanks!

[Steve Kroenke]

Zboggess,

I make my porch dividers for the Trio Castles from something called "trim coil" which is vinyl covered aluminum. You can get it already painted white on both sides. You can buy big rolls of it at Lowes I believe. You can also use sheet metal or possibly wood. I have not used wood.

I cut out a piece of trim coil about 5 and 1/2 inches square and bend over one end to create around a 1/2 inch lip. I drill two small holes at the ends of the lip. I trim off the pointed end of the divider on the upper area to create a rounded look. This is my porch divider.

Then I mark these holes on the "green side corner" of the Trio castle and drill holes there. It is easier to do this when you are first assembling a Trio castle, but I have done it afterwards.

Now I attach the porch divider with rivets to 3 sections of each floor so that each hole has a floor which is blocked and provides territorial privacy and keeps martin nestlings from wandering all the way around the house on the porch. You could also attach 6 dividers per floor at every pointed floor section to create even more territorial privacy.

As I stated before, you can use regular aluminum sheet metal. And you could use nuts/bolts rather than rivets. Rivets are just so much easier to use in my opinion.

This has worked well for our Trio Castles and we often achieve 100% occupancies levels.

Good luck.

Steve