I love Troyer gourds, BUT...

[Brad Biddle]

The Conley II entrance is not remotely starling resistant. This is the 3rd time this season that I have shot multiple Starlings that are either nesting in, or attempting to nest inside my gourds. The count for today is 7 definite kills. I think I am going to fill out the paperwork and jump through the hoops to get a suppressor. I’m using a bolt action 22 and Aguilla Super Extra subsonics. At 40 yards I get a quarter sized group propping on my truck mirror. One plus of being left handed is being able to easily shoot out of my truck window.

8 now

10
11

[Spiderman]

Which brand/model of bolt action 22 rifle???

[Dave Duit]

It is good to hear you are eliminating the starlings. Good work.

[C.C.Martins]

Brad,
If you havnt, use those PMCA wing entrapment crescents...itll work to keep them out. costs $2.25, well worth it. meantime, shoot the buggers.
https://www.purplemartin.org/uploads/me ... ti-493.pdf

Have them on my original crescent openings and on some tunneled entrances...had a starling breach a crescent and a female went right after it...it was a fight and a significant emotional event for me, could have lost that female. I put crescents on every gourd, raised porches whole 9 yards...didnt have to take gourds off to do it, took only a few minutes each one. they adjusted fine, still shoot starlings even if they glance at it but they arent getting in.
Tom

[4th Gen Martin Fan]

Brad,
Many of us in the Southeast US and Texas are dealing with European Starlings breaching the Conley II entrances. People in other areas of the country claim that they do not have the problem that we have in the Southeast. Speculation was that the starlings here are smaller. Unfortunately more and more people are experiencing starling breaches of Conley II entrances in other areas of country.
Fortunately Lewis in Newnan, Georgia has developed a way to make Conley II entrances more starling resistant without affecting the entry and exit of purple martins.
At this point, I am losing track of how many landlords are extremely pleased with the Lewis Mod. All of these landlords vouch that the Lewis Mod is easy to do and is very effective. Over 300 Conley II entrances are protected by the Lewis Mod.
A search of Lewis Modification of Conley II entrances yields many references.
Some of the best post are:
https://www.purplemartin.org/forum/view ... ey#p275273
https://www.purplemartin.org/forum/view ... ey#p267232
https://www.purplemartin.org/forum/view ... ey#p267012
https://www.purplemartin.org/forum/view ... lewis+sreh
Please feel free to ask any questions about the Lewis Modification.

[Brad-AL]

The rifle is a bolt action Marlin. I can't remember the model #. It's not a new rifle but it's no more than 15 years old. It was made before they offered an adjustable trigger and I put one in it several years ago. That makes a huge difference. It shoots the Aguilla shells that I'm using fairly good but it shoots the Aguilla Sniper Sub Sonics incredibly well. It will put 5 of those in a dime sized spot at 40 yards. I ran out of those right before the presidential election and couldn't get any, so I went with the ones I have now. I did miss or only cut feathers on 5 Starlings this afternoon, so much more of that and I'll have to find some more SSS's.

I will check out the crescents and the modifications suggested. Thanks for those. I will likely just put WDC entrances on that I cut myself from Sintra. When the WDC entrance first came out, I hand made a jig to cut entrances with on my router table and I made it exactly 1.1875" tall. I didn't know at the time that the original WDC entrance was 1.20" tall. I had wrongly assumed that the WDC entrance was the standard 1.1875" that the original crescent was. I didn't know the size of mine were "wrong" until I had successfully used them for a season, so I just kept using my "undersized" WDC. I would never have changed if a commercially available tunnelled gourd had not been put on the market. I have been using those "undersized" entrances for probably 12 years and have not had a Starling breach that I am aware of. I have definitely never had a Starling nest on the inside of a cavity with my homemade WDC entrance on it.

Final count for the day was 12 confirmed kills. I will hit em early in the morning and see how many lone parents are out there. I do hate killing baby birds of any sort, but if any of the Starling eggs have hatched, they will be killed in the morning.

[Brad-AL]

I scanned those posts about the Lewis mod.

Let me see if I've got this straight.... It's a thick, oversized crescent entrance with a flush floor? I use to see Starlings wiggle to try and gain entry to a gourd, but these, or at least some of these are going straight in, no wiggle, no hesitation. They're small Starlings.

I may add some of those Lewis mods to gourds now and see if they stop Starlings that already have nests, assuming that I didn't kill all of them. If it will stop a Starling with a nest and eggs built from entering, it's Starling proof. I may do the same with some of my undersized WDC's.

[4th Gen Martin Fan]

Brad,
If I understand correctly the WDC (or Conley Excluder) and Conley II was developed Willy D. Conley.
The WDC was developed and released first. The WDC utilized the "pips" like John "Duke" Snyder's Excluder entrance. Since Duke Snyder had a patent on any entrance utilizing the pips, Willy Conley and anyone using pips should pay a royalty to Snyder.
In answer to the patent infringement of his WDC, Willy Conley next developed the Conley II. The Conley II is basically a obround with a dip in the bottom center. No pips are present on the Conley II.
I have never dealt with an original WDC entrance so I do not know if the dimensions was 1.20" or 1.1875". I would assume that your modified WDC entrances with 1.1875" height works well. If your home made, modified WDC entrances have been working well then I can understand why you would want to keep them the same.
Someone else will have to answer whether homemade (and commercially not sold) WDC entrances with pips infringes upon Duke Snyder's patent and should be paying royalties to Duke Snyder.

Your question would imply that adding the Lewis Mod to Conley II makes the Conley II a crescent entrance with a flush floor. That would be an incorrect assumption. First and foremost, the dip of the Conley II must be retained in the Lewis Mod to Conley II. The distance from the top of the Conley II to the bottom of the dip must be maintained so that there is a 1 3/16" (or as you stated 1.1875"). If the dip in the Conley II is eliminated I would assume that purple martins cannot enter.

Is there a Lewis Modification to Crescent Entrances? Yes. It reduces the risk of starling breaches in an original Crescent entrance. The crescent entrance has a 1 3/16" height also.
https://www.purplemartin.org/forum/view ... lewis+sreh

I hope that my explanation has not muddied the original topic "I love Troyer gourds, BUT..."

It just dawned on me Brad Biddle and Brad-AL might be the same person! I apologize if that is correct.

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Brad, good to see your post, and hope that you are doing well The best things to do if a starling is breaching the entrance:
1) thicken the entrance to about 5/8in or 3/4in (make it thicker)
2)make the entrance 2in wide
3)raise the floor so that it is within 1/8 of the entrance

I use homemade rectangular entrances that are 1-3/16inch high, 2in wide, and 3/4inch thick, and flush with the porch. The starlings cannot enter this. Sure is a good money saving idea for do-it-yourselfers

[Brad-AL]

Yes, both Brads are the same Brad. The world could only handle one of me at the time. LOL I don't know for sure how I wound up with 2 usernames but I think it involved the scout report.

You are exactly correct on your history of the WDC. I was very active on Purple Martin forums back then and there was a big stink about all that. What is now known as the Conley II was first seen on the Purple Martin Clubhouse and was developed by several of the members. I don't know if Willy Conley knew about it or if he happened to come up with the same design at basically the same time. When reading the patent it is the only logical modification that could be made to somewhat keep the design of the WDC without infringing on the patent.

That was all back before tunnelled gourds were being made by any manufacturer. I was not involved in designing "The Clubhouse" entrance but there were some who felt that Willy Conley flat out copied it. That was a tumultuous time to be a Forum active Purple Martin landlord. There was 2 different privately owned PM forums with bad blood between the two of them. That whole ordeal sort of turned me off to the Purple Martin Internet experience.

Yes, I can tell you for certain that the original "store bought" WDC entrance was 1.20" tall, not the SREH standard 1.1875"

Not trying to dig up skeletons, just giving you a history lesson on the whole thing...

Now back to the important stuff...

I killed 5 more Starlings this morning. One of them was definitely "bonded" to one of my gourds. I think the other 4 were just perching on the gourd racks. There's still one more adult Starling feeding nestlings but I haven't gotten a clear shot at it yet. I have picked off two of the near fledging nestlings, but the gourd to the side of it on the rack is somewhat behind it also from my vantage point and it has taken some shrapnel from the 2 shots, so I am waiting for a better shot on the adult.

I did read about making sure the dip in the Conley II was preserved when raising the porch. Thanks for mentioning that though. Raising the porch on an SREH to deter Starlings, is old school stuff that's been around as long as SREH have. I ordered 24 of the "wing entrapment" guards from the PMCA last night. I'll install them as soon as they arrive.

Looks like I'm going to have to dig out my old tunnel making equipment and make some entrances...

[Brad-AL]

Brad, good to see your post, and hope that you are doing well The best things to do if a starling is breaching the entrance:
1) thicken the entrance to about 5/8in or 3/4in (make it thicker)
2)make the entrance 2in wide
3)raise the floor so that it is within 1/8 of the entrance

I use homemade rectangular entrances that are 1-3/16inch high, 2in wide, and 3/4inch thick, and flush with the porch. The starlings cannot enter this. Sure is a good money saving idea for do-it-yourselfers

Hey Emil! Great to hear from you! How are things with you? It's hard for me to fight Starlings in a timely manner as busy as life has me now. Those 2 little kids that I use to post pictures of on the clubhouse have lots of activities that keep me busy in addition to our business and church. I have to pick my battles. LOL Our daughter just finished up her first year in college and her little brother will be a junior in high school this fall. He and I have been fishing as much as possible.

[4th Gen Martin Fan]

Brad & Emil,
It is good to hear from seasoned PMCA Forum members like yourself.
I suspect that most PMCA Forum members have changed over to the Facebook purple martin forum. I do not have the time for or interest in Facebook.

Brad,
You have helped me understand why the WDC and Conley II are such a sensitive topic.
As to your original topic, I agree. I really appreciate the Troyer gourds but wish that the Troyers would modify the Conley II. Several PMCA Forum members have suggested modifications to the Troyers but changes in the manufacturing process are expensive in a narrow profit margin company.

[pmlover]

Its not just the gourds, its the T-14s also. I had to trap a pair of starlings out of a t-14 box 2 days ago. Thank God for the t-14 traps and the gourd traps.

[Brad-AL]

Any large cavity with the Conley II entrance is in danger of allowing Starlings to enter. It's not the gourd or the T14 or the whatever, it's the entrance. I'd take the old original crescent entrance over these. I've got 102 gourds hanging and only 36 of them have my homemade WDC entrances on them. I've got lots of changing to do.

Final count on the Starlings is 19. That's off 2 gourd racks. There's still one gourd with one adult left that is frantically feeding large nestlings. I can't get a clear shot from my vantage point due to the gourd placement. I ran out of shells and had to come in to get another box. I'm getting rusty. 19 with 25 shots isn't very good on Starlings. Those are House Sparrow numbers. Guess I've got some practicing to do.

Gonna take a break and take advantage of the cloudy, drizzly weather and go fishing with my son. Maybe the weather has all the drunk pleasure boaters off the lake. We're gonna try to get in a few hours of fish catching before more TS rains get here.

[Lewis]

Brad, one solution for the starling with nestlings. I know you know about , just take the nestlings and nest . she wont come back.
House or gourd ? Necessity is the mother of invention. The reason I came up with the "Lewis Modification" was because I could not get a starling trap to work. The Safe Haven 's entrance is separated from the nesting cavity by a partition. The large T-14 trap would not work and the smaller universal trap would not work. I knew to raise the floor and the PMCA wing guards(wep) I had on hand to reinforce the thin crescent sreh that looked to be bending when a starling was coming out. It was only later that I realized the PMCA wing guard helped stop the starling. One had eggs and could not re enter. I changed all six openings on the Safe Haven House and that stopped the starlings getting into the Safe Haven. I had 8 THG's with the Conley II and 8 THG's with round holes no tunnels. I had an old Trio I had converted to large cavities with crescent sreh's. The starlings were attracted to the round hole gourds. I had 3 Troyer/Haskel traps for the round hole gourds and was able to trap or shoot all of the starlings. I converted all of the round hole gourds save one with Troyer Tunnels with conley II srehs. I used the one round hole gourd a nest box trap to control the starlings until I converted all the gourds with conley II sreh's with the "Lewis modification. I bought another safe haven and modified it and used the trio with 2 Sparo doors to catch sparrows.

I hope you and your son have a good day fishing. I have had good luck fishing for bass during a light rain.

Lewis

[Brad-AL]

Thanks for the reply Lewis. I thought about taking the nestlings and the nest out, but if I leave them in the gourd, then I'm going to eventually get a good shot at her and that'll be one more non breeding Starling left in the world. Good shot or not, I will not allow those nestlings to fledge. Thanks for reporting your success with the wing entrapment guards as Starling stoppers. I surely would not have thought of that, and hopefully I will have 24 of them installed one day this week, assuming that they come in this week.

We did have a great afternoon fishing. I have determined that I am going to become a crappie fisherman. There is a crappie fishing forum that has helped me progress with crappie fishing as much as the PMCA forum helped me progress as a budding Martin landlord many years ago. I have fished all my life but until this year I have never caught crappie before they started spawning and surely none after they were finished. So far we've had a good year. I don't know that I'll fish for them during the summer, but I'm going to chase them fall, winter and spring. The biggest this afternoon was 15 1/2" and we brought home enough for 2 nights dinner this week. Every keeper crappie but 2 were caught on a John Deere green colored jig. First time I've ever used that color, but it won't be the last.

My son with the big one and another pretty good one:

[Lewis]

Thanks for the photos. Those are some big Crappie. Good to see you and your boy on the water together. Good luck with your martins.

Lewis