White pine straw vs Yellow pine straw

[The Country Toad]

sorry for more questions ya'll,

i see the popularity of white pine straw and the success, but i've got alot of yellow pine (sugar pine loblally ect) on the property. are the yellow pines a true no-go when it comes to prenesting? i can prob get my hands on wheat straw but i wanted everything to stay as dry as possible.

these are in the t14 style housing.

thanx all!

[Bird Brain]

I have the same question. I have pine trees on property and assumed those pine needles would be acceptable. Am I wrong? I have no idea what kind of pine they are.

[Dave Duit]

I want to start by saying I'm not an expert on yellow pine needles. I live in Iowa and we use the white pine needles after they turn light brown in color after falling to the ground. I did look at images of the yellow pine needles and they appear to be extremely similar to the white pine needles. If the yellow pine needles have the same soft feel as that of white pine needles and they still can be bent easily even when brown in color; I would say you are safe to use the yellow pine needles. If the yellow pine needles are brittle when handled after they turn brown, I would say don't use them. I hope someone who is more knowledgeable of yellow and white pine needles than myself will pitch in on the differences.

[PMDavid]

Hey there Dave and everyone. I’m gonna weigh in.... living here in the south I have no earthly idea what the heck white pine needles look like! We do have as someone said ,loblolly ,long leaf,slash pine etc. These are quite long and a bit stiff. I have used them now for 4 seasons. They seem to be fine and the martins seem to like em. Some one said are they a “no go”.? What do they mean? Has it been advised to only use the white pine variety? I’d like to have an answer for that ,I’m curious of the answer.

[deancamp]

After learning on this forum about prenesting with pine straw and then figuring out that is the same thing as pine needles, I indeed used pine needles to prenest my gourds. I kept researching on the subject for the next year and actually found some white pine needles and they were much better. The white pine needles are very soft and not rigid at all and I don't think you could poke yourself with them if you wanted to. I don't know what kind of pine tree the needles came from my first year, but they were very rigid and could poke you. Although the Martins really form these into their nest I could see it as a possibility that the young could get poked and injured???? I've never heard of a yellow pine, but the goal would be to get a very soft pine needle.

[tor]

I really dont think it makes too much of a difference what kind of pine straw you use. I use regular pine straw, and they don't seem to mind.

[MartinBro]

My martins are sophisticated aristocrats. They are pine straw aficionados. They expect their pine straw to be of the white variety. Their pine straw must be sustainably raised, organically grown, non GMO, gluten free, vine ripened, and hand selected at the peak of perfection. The pine straw must then be delivered on a chariot pulled by Clydesdales. Anything less is simply unacceptable. I asked my martins once. "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" They said. "But of course."

[tor]

My martins are sophisticated aristocrats. They are pine straw aficionados. They expect their pine straw to be of the white variety. Their pine straw must be sustainably raised, organically grown, non GMO, gluten free, vine ripened, and hand selected at the peak of perfection. The pine straw must then be delivered on a chariot pulled by Clydesdales. Anything less is simply unacceptable. I asked my martins once. "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" They said. "But of course."

"If there ain't no white pine needles in there, I'm leavin'"

[randyM]

I use Ponderosa pine needles (fairly rigid, somewhat pointy and 5-6 in long) for pre-nest material in my cavities. Martins don't seem to mind at all. I've tried some wheat straw as well, martins used both types of cavities in the proportion offered, so no obvious preference by the martins at my colony. Wheat straw does hold moisture longer, so I'm going to use all P. pine needles going forward. I place various nest material offerings (P. pine needles, wheat straw, 5" garden vine pieces, 5" cattail pieces, etc.) in my yard and martins take some of everything offered, including more P. pine needles. I think you'd be fine using yellow pine needles for pre-nest material...it certainly won't be the determining factor for martins to choose to nest in your housing or not. I conduct weekly nest checks and have never observed a young featherless baby martin that had any "poke" marks or other skin irritation from using P. pine needles, and 97.8% (380/389) of all young hatched at my colony have fledged. One good thing about using P. pine needles is that starlings don't appear to like them and toss the out of the nest cavities.....this works great for starling control because when the starling is busy tossing out the P. pine needles from inside the nest cavity, I sneak closer to the bird house, give a whistle, and shoot the starling with my shot gun as she exits the bird house. I usually shoot at least a dozen starlings each spring with this method.

Randy