Newbie Here: Help me decide whether I have the yard for a Martin house

[flyin-lowe]

I would have to dig them up but years ago I found some colonies near my office in Indiana that were completely surround by trees. One place I had pictures of had limbs touching one of the houses if I remember correctly. A lot of people up here almost have the feeling that martins are afraid of trees and avoid them at all cost, forgetting they spend a lot of their life in trees. If the trees start to cause a problem. primarily giving predators access to the hosue, either by climbing, or as a hididng spot to attack from they will leave. One of the places I had pictures of was in a large city with a small city lot and it had tall trees all the way around, obviously old trees and the martins dropped in like nothing. I was just getting started at the time so I was shocked to see them. I'll see if I can find the pics.... It will give you a little hope as you are way more wide open than some I have seen in person.

[flyin-lowe]

Here is one of the old post, back before I had my first martins... This is not the property that was in town but you can see there are trees everywhere, still had a load of martins.

viewtopic.php?p=148816&hilit=trees#p148816

[tor]

I'm with John. You'll have to do some serious tree cutting on both sides to have a realistic chance on this. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but pretty close.