I am greiving!!!

[Jim Spetzman]

The last few days my 2 martin houses had no activity so I thought something must be wrong! I took my houses down and found all 14 of my babys were dead!! I noticed last week for 2 days, I had about 20 martins coming to my house,landing, looking in the holes, then leaving and doing all over again in about a minute. I think they were trying to get any of the young to leave if they could. They were about 2/3s grown. We had a very cool week with lows in the lower 50s and windy. Does that sound like what killed them? Also I had a hawk land on the house and scare the martins but it only lasted for about 30 seconds. I think the babys were probably dead by then. On a lighter note, what I learned this year was that I have 2 houses, one plastic rectangle, one 6 sided aluminum. I dont know the names of the houses, but I modified both houses to deep living quarters. The rectangle one I made so that they were double depth, but straight in a line. The alum one I made so they were also double size compartments, but when a bird went in,it had to make a sharp 90* turn to go into the deeper compartment. I had all of the martin activity in the alum house with no acitvity in the rectangle one. both were 6 ft apart and close to the same height, with the alum about 2 ft higher. What I concluded is they must feel safer with the right angle housing and prefer it to the straight housing? What I am thinking of doing next year is to build a wood house with 90* houses, my thinking is that it will be warmer for the cool spells we get or will it be to hot for the summer? For the last 2 years, I have had no problem with starlings and very minor problems with sparrows so I would make the holes round instead of SREHs? thanks, Jim

[mjneppl]

i would build the northstar wood house and hang 4 gourds underneath it.

also this is why nest checks are a must. some sevin dust and a wood house with gourds--i raised the most babies.

incidently the chances of those martins coming back are not good when all the young die. most will take up somewhere else to nest next year.

[John Miller]

Jim


There have been many reports here of losses in northern states. Here's one from Daryl Lindstrom in MN.

http://www.purplemartin.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14528

I think you will need SREH for your planned wooden house -- starlings tend to love wooden houses.

My hunch is that some of your adults will return; that maybe death of nestlings from weather does not deter adults from returning, as would losses due to predation. We don't know this for sure, but let's hope and wait and see.

John M

[Guest]

Jim,
I'm sorry you lost your babies.
I'm grieving too. We've had nestlings in rehab because of the heat, and even though they were released, I'm afraid they aren't doing well.
Sometimes we have to accept the hard reality of nature's way: "survival of the fittest." The fact you look after your martins and care about them, gives them a huge advantage. Keep the faith.

Kelly

[bird fan]

Hi Jim; your loss was due to bad weather, I have been in the same boat here in Wisconsin, This is happening all around the midwest, not much you can do about it, you will have losses because of the cold and windy weather. Here are a few tips that due work, Go to your local farm and fleet or pet shop and buy dried mealworms, soak them for a while till there soft and put them on a feeding platform, inspect your nests daily, you can feed the young scrambled eggs and mealworms also, I did this and it works! also just before nite fall put a hand warmer in the nest cavity, try to put dried leaves or grass so the birds don't get to hot from it, remember Martins do not put thier down feathers in there nests and they need something to keep them warm or the young will die from the cold. I managed to keep a single 5 day old bird alive during this cold spell and the Adults have been able to keep him alive and now he's close to fledging.

[Guest]

Hi Jim: There have been lots of losses all around this area. Myself, I have 14 nesting pairs this year. During the first cold snap here, I lost 5 babies out of six in one nest and the sixth baby I saved by hand-feeding it crickets for 24 hours until the parents took over. That baby ended up fledging and is still visiting with mom and dad each night. During the cold snap last week I lost no babies at all. But during each of the cold snaps I supplemental fed the Martins on a B&B a combination of crickets and dried meal worms. The Martins were hungry enough that I didn't even need to wet the meal worms down. I just fed them straight out of the container, but I ended up feeding 25,000 meal worms and 2,000 crickets during these two cold snaps. I've ended up fledging 64 babies out of 69 that were born, so I feel pretty good about that. Yes, Mother Nature can be cruel sometimes!

Greg Gassen

[trank]

Hi Jim,

The advice you received from these posts includes some of the most important things you can do to save your martins in the future. With a season like we are experiencing this year,it is a matter of life or death. Supplemental feeding was probably the number one reason that babies and adults survived this season. One thing I did learn about supplemental feeding is that not all adults will feed off an elevated feeding platform no matter how hungry they are. So there babies have to be fed by hand, which by the way is very time consuming.

Second to that was frequent nest checks, I stepped mine up to every 2 days this year, at times it was every day.

When It comes to housing it's going to be hard to beat a wood house. I'm posting a picture of a T-10 I put up this year. It has 6 side entrances, the martins make a 90 degree turn after entering. This style of entrance offers more security and is warmer. The other 4 entrances are standard and all are 12" deep.

Tom