Owl Guards
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Carlton
- Posts: 1959
- Joined: Tue May 17, 2005 6:42 pm
- Location: Florida/Deerfield Beach
- Martin Colony History: I moved to South Florida, from Delaware, in August of 2015.
I care for a 6 condo Sunset House as well as two Deluxe Gourd Racks, with 24 Chirpynest/Excluder gourds, along a canal in Pompano Beach, Florida.
At Quiet Waters Park, nearby in Deerfield Beach, I care for a Deluxe Gourd Rack with 12 TVG's. I also care for a Deluxe Gourd rack with 12 Excluder gourds with Modified Excluder entrances. I am substituting 6 Chirpynest boxes for 6 of the Conley II entranced gourds in 2026.
At another local park, Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek, I care for a Trendsetter 12, 5 gourds rack with 60 Excluder gourds with Modified Excluder Entrances and 1 Deluxe Gourd Rack with 12 Troyer Vertical Gourds with Starling Stoppers over the Conley II's to keep out smaller starlings.
I put up my Troyer Horizontals and Supergourds yesterday complete with my owl guards. I am concerned that the owl guards might make the martins uneasy and they will not try out my setup. Does anyone have any experience with this topic? I am relatively new at this and have never had a nesting pair of martins. I just had lots of SY ones visiting last summer. I never saw any of them actually go in the gourds but they just hung on and looked in. I did not have any owl guards up last season. They stayed around through most of the month of July. I got worried as I heard owls and my neighbor saw a great horned owl catch a rabbit in his yard. We also have a lot of gulls and fish crows in the area.
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geneinmurphy
- Posts: 348
- Joined: Thu Nov 27, 2003 12:09 pm
- Location: North Carolina/Murphy
Carlton.....I have used 3/8" aluminum rods as owl guards and the PM's had no problems with them. I actually think they feel safer with them. The most important thing to remember is to mount the guards 8" in front of the gourd entrance. My PM's always flew in from the side of the guard, yet it's too small for a flying hawk or owl to enter........