Dead Martins

[Guest]

I have had more dead martins than usual this year. In past years I would find one or maybe two but this year I have found fourteen in the past three weeks. Some found in the house and the others on the ground within twenty yards of the houses. Five today in compartments, all with eggs or babies. In one compartment today the eggs were broken, the other nests the eggs/babies looked ok.

No obvious injuries on the birds but some of them had been dead a few days making it hard to tell for sure.

I have an ongoing battle with HOSPs but have never had losses of adult birds like this before.

Not sure what is going on, any ideas?

Established colony, Two t-14 houses w/ SRE entrances, 17 nests with 39 eggs/21 babies today. Some nests may fail now with loss of adult bird.

[CraigMo.]

I am no expert, but it does not sound like a predator. Maybe a virus, disease, poison. I don't know. Can you take a dead bird to a local animal control center and see if they can point you in the right direction to maybe have it tested. Sorry for you losses and I hope you figure it out.
Craig

[SoIndyDon]

Wow! So sorry for your losses. Contacting a county/state extension office would be good for all Ohio martins.

Last year I found 2 adults dead in an egg-less nest. Puzzling mystery, but more than one pair is scary.

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Don't rule out the sparrows, it could be them. The broken eggs sounds like sparrows

Another idea, the female could have been caught by an owl or hawk. It can cuase all the babies to ide.. These hungry babies jump, fly, or crawl a small distance but will be near the poles

Disease is so rare, I doubt that it was a disease

Cold weather, or rainy weather can cause both adults to die

[SoIndyDon]

Thanks Emil! Your info about illness rare in martins is appreciated. This story began to worry me for Cheryl and her martins.

[bobnjo]

How sad. I read somewhere in the Forum once, that you could possibly take orphaned babies and place in other nests where the parents were feeding and they would sort of adopt them. Anyone else hear of this? It could be helpful for Cheryl.


By the way, I've got a cute little mini-video of some babies on the web page.
Bob

[Bill Pec]

Cheryl,
Sorry to hear of your bird's plight.
If you have had an extended period of bad weather, cold, rain, the deaths could be the result of starvation. Martins die of starvation in a matter of days.
Bill pec

[stan davison]

could it be buffalo gnats? or the biting flies? I read where they can cause problems.

[KathyF]

That many dead adult martins sounds like something more of a problem than house sparrows. And blackflies usually aren't a problem for the adults, but for the unfeathered babies aren't they??

Do you have a lot of starlings around? If you're using SREH, then they shouldn't be a problem either.

There was an article here about an Amish guy having a bacterial problem with his pond where the martins were drinking and it killed a large part of his colony.

Can't recall where I read that.

[Guest]

Thanks everyone for the input. I'm still exploring ideas and still wondering about the sparrows. I'm not finding any other dead birds around, the barn swallows would be harvesting the same insects wouldn't they? They seem to be fine. Although we have had plenty of rain, we haven't had any extended days with zero flying weather recently. The pond idea is interesting because I do have a pond, but no livestock access and it seems healthy. And again, no other dead birds or frogs, turtles etc.

My oldest babies hatched June 12 which is the earliest I have record of in my current notebook, the next hatch was 4-5 days after that. I'm hesitant to move any babies into different nests because they are all at 4-5 babies each already. I've had nests fledge six before, but usually not.

I appreciate the thoughts and ideas. And I will be spending more time with the pellet gun just because.

[KathyF]

I tried finding the story in the update links, but was unable to. Maybe Louise can provide a link to the story.

[Louise Chambers]

Indiana landlord Chris Slabaugh was the one to document avian botulism at his colony site. Here is an excerpt from his online Landlord of the Year article ( http://www.purplemartin.org/LOY/LOY1997.html ) since the botulism article is not online:

Setbacks Along the Way

Chris' years with the martins have not been without real tragedy. In 1995, his colony site was devastated by two outbreaks of Type C Avian Botulism, which had not previously been documented in Purple Martins (see Update 6(2), "Purple Martin Die-offs During the Summer of 1995"). During the anguish of seeing Purple Martins literally fall from the sky, unable to sustain flight, and then die, Chris collected dead and live martins from the ground, sent dead birds off to be tested, and spent hundreds of dollars in phone calls seeking the cause of the disaster. With his typically positive faith and determination, Chris salvaged as many nestlings as he could by fostering orphaned young (it was the adult birds who died in the botulism outbreak) into the remaining active nests, making sure they had a chance to survive. He managed to fledge 92 young out of the 62 nests, despite the loss of an estimated 106 parent martins, plus 112 dead young and 41 unhatched eggs.

Other disease outbreaks at martin colonies have included avian pox, avian pneumonia due to aspergillosis - and what is happening at Cheryl's does not sound like either of them. A WI landlord had salmonella kill birds at his site, it killed birds of all ages, and may have come from eggshells the martins ate at neighbor's compost area. With Chris's case, adults died, leaving young to starve to death.

Cheryl, I'd suggest really keeping an eye out for house sparrows, although we don't usually hear about them killing adult martins. Or maybe a starling that is breaching the entrances. So sorry you are losing birds. If it continues I would see if Ohio wildlife (state agency) would test a few birds. Or contact county extension agent.

[Brad-AL]

Cheryl, about the Barn Swallows. I doubt that Martins and Barn Swallows have the same diet. I'm sure they eat some of the same insects, but the Barn Swallows here rarely fly over head high while feeding. They cruise over the pastures and hayfields catching low flying insects. Martins on the other hand, normally feed very high in the sky.

Edit to add in regard to Louise's post: Symptoms from pox include scabs on the soft tissue around the face, and/or thick mucus in the back of the throat. Birds affected by Asper will lay flat and gasp for breath. Birds that die from Botulism usually are lying flat on their bellies with their neck stretched out straight ahead.

[rtolliver]

Cheryl can you tell how old the young are that are dying? My colony a couple years ago suffered losses due to the biting gnats, i think it was related to severe flooding in our area. Most young survived till about 8-10 days old. They become weak with redish tinted spots on them. What concerns me is that most of the colonies ( not all ), that are hatching young, would be reaching this age, in this area of the country. If you have other landlords in your area also losing youngsters biting gnats may be a possibility !!

[Guest]

Sorry rtoliver, maybe I wasn't clear. All the dead martins to date have been adult or subadult birds (and sorry, haven't tracked specifics on age or sex beyond that. Will do that from here on if I have more deads.)

In another nest check yesterday no dead birds and all babies were ok and accounted for, five nests with babies ages ranging from 3-11 days old. Still waiting to see status of remaining nests with eggs. Will try to do more frequent nest checks to stay on top of this situation.

Thanks Brad and Louise for the disease info.