playing dawn song to attract birds

colleen · Mon Mar 09, 2015 8:56 pm

I am a brand new, want to be, landlord, and i need help! We moved to ohio last year, and the first project on the list was a martin house. I researched intensely, and up she went....to no avail. We even played the dawn song every morning last year, but no luck. I was so disappointed.
And so...here it is again, time to get ready for the hopeful appearance of a new colony!
Does anyone have any good suggestions about how to play the Dawnsong cd...without loosing sleep or your mind? How close does the speaker have to be to the house? How loud do you need to play the cd? What's the best system to use?
I SO want to do everything we can to have purple martins! Thankyou for your sage advice...whoever has some!!!

DebA · Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:03 pm

Hi, Colleen, welcome to the forum!

When I started the first few years I played Dawn Song CD. I am out in the country so I just let it rip and played all day long. No neighbors to worry about. My system was a $25 CD/Radio player from discount store. I made sure it had a replay button and I turned the volume all the way up. Nothing fancy. I had mine by my barn where I ran the extension cord from. But it was 40-50 feet or more from my housing.

You could hear it all over our farm. It never bothered me but there was one time my husband cried uncle.

Good luck to you!

Deb

Hanover Bill · Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:04 am

Hi Colleen;

Keep on playing that DawnSong, I give it a lot of credit for attracting my first Martins. I actually started with the cassette tape version, but after two of those wore out on me I switched over to the CD version.

My setup was nothing fancy, just ran an extension chord out from the garage as far as I could get it, which was still probably 50-75 freet from the housing, and played the CD player as loud as I could without distortion, it doesn't have to be directly under the housing. I would play it from early morning, which varied depending on when I dragged myself out of bed, till about noon every day. I found that most of my original visitors would show up around 11:00AM.

Best of luck to you.

Hanover Bill.

KathyF · Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:32 am

DebA wrote: It never bothered me but there was one time my husband cried uncle.
Deb

Dave Reynolds · Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:08 am

Colleen --- Welcome to the Forum ... Keep reading this Forum of questions and answers, many Ohioans' here, with great stories and advice. Check out the Scout Report Page for arrivals in your area. And do keep playing the Dawn Song..... Others will chimes in I'm sure.. Have a great year.

Dave

Archer · Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:09 am

I setup my stereo and cd player inside my house(don't have to worry about rain) and just ran speaker wires to the martin house. Mounted the outdoor speaker on the pole pointing it up. I played it fairly loud as I live in the country and my nearest neighbours are a couple of hundred yards away. I dug the wire into the ground so I didn't have to worry about it when the time came to cut the grass. I hooked up a timer for the power cord to the stereo and cd player. The timer was the kind you use when you have to plug in your car in the winter. I alternate the Dawn Song CD with the Daytime Chatter CD, and let it run all day, (Sometimes I turn it off for a little peace and quiet). Once I had some martins, I kept it going until they were seriously nesting, just turn down the volume a little. The first martins that stayed liked it, so I just kept playing it. I wish you all success.

p.s. You get some weird looks when visitors drive into your yard and open their car doors, lol.

BuddyS · Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:21 am

If you have an iTunes account you can burn the cd to your account, download to your smartphone. You can buy a $10 blue tooth speaker and stick it in one of your compartments and play dawnsong wirelessly. Set the alarm on your smartphone to start at 4am.

Ron Alsop · Wed Mar 11, 2015 8:53 am

Hi Colleen, here is my tidbit of advice--I wore out 2 cd players. Last year my son said a CD has too many moving parts, so, we got on e-bay and purchased a cheap, used I-pod which is digital and no moving parts. Works great!!

John Carter · Wed Mar 11, 2015 12:28 pm

This may sound old fashioned in today's I pads, smart phone, Bluetooth and all the others but this did work for me the second year I tried it after 8 years of waiting. I had tried velcroing and cheap recorder player on the under side of the Trio box but it was a pain to start and stop. This is what I did.

I got a Sharp dual deck cassette player on ebay for $20 and it was just like new. I had a Sony Stereo system in the basement that was not good enough for my then teenage son (he did buy a great system that I wouldn't touch) that has a good amplifier. I hooked the player to the amplifier and fixed a plugin jack outlet on the side of the house. 50 feet of speaker wire ran to a speaker (Radio Shack #40-1440) on top of a 12 compartment wood house I built and has since been replaced by a 18 gourd rack. At the power source I had a timer that had multiple times setting. I had the timer set to turn 1/2 hour before dawn playing the dawnsong side in deck 1 of the dual tape set to loop. When I left for work about 7 a.m. I switched the player to deck 2 which had the daytime chatter ready to go on and set to loop too. The same timer was set to play for 1/2 hour and turn off for 1/2 hour and periods of 1 hour on 1/2 hour off until sunset. Before going to bed I switched back to the dawn song tape in deck 1.

I had a lot of visitors the first year I played the tapes and got a pair the second year that fledged 3 and things have been looking good since them. I took the system down the third year after the pair and two others made my front yard home. Last year 14 pair and counting on more....