The Purple Martin Conservation Association is proud to recognize and honor Charles McEwen of Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, as our first-ever "Purple Martin Landlord of the Year." "Charlie," as his friends call him, is a 75-year-old widower, and has been a Purple Martin landlord for nearly 57 years. In 1990, we spent several days interviewing Charlie at his Canadian home, then in 1991, we met him again at his Florida home. He has active Purple Martin colonies at both locations. We are bestowing this honor on him because he has generously contributed to the welfare of the Purple Martin in many innovative ways. For more on this, read below.

During the past several years, Charlie has been experimenting with ways to keep the non-native, European Starling out of martin houses. One of the reasons martins aren't as abundant as they used to be, is because, in the 19th century, humans released a few starlings into this continent from Europe. In the decades that followed, starlings spread, unchecked, like a feathered black plague, at the expense of many native cavity nesters. Unfortunately, starlings aggressively take over martin houses, where they bludgeon martins to death with their long, sharp beaks, puncture and eat their eggs, and through their territorial aggression, prevent martin colonization at unmanaged martin houses. Because martins didn't coevolve with the severe depredations caused by these non-native pests, they don't lay enough eggs to compensate - therefore, martin populations have declined severely from what they were a century ago.

After much trial and error, Charlie came up with the half-moon entrance hole shown in Figs. 1, 2, 3, and 4, that excludes starlings, but allows martins easy entry. As one of the founders and officers of the Purple Martin and Bird Society of Southeastern New Brunswick, Charlie had the membership test this innovative hole design at the northern limit of the martin's breeding range, throughout the province of New Brunswick. He also has tested the hole design in several locations around Lantana, FL., near the southern limit of the martin's breeding range. Guess what? They seem to work! A similar starling-proof hole has been recommended by the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service and used successfully in the Pacific northwest (i.e., in Oregon and Washington) for the past decade. Their entrance hole is a rectangular slot measuring 2-3/4" wide and 1-1/4" high, placed flush with the porch and compartment floor. Here at the PMCA's research site in Pennsylvania, we've also been testing Charlie's and similar entrance hole designs in gourds. While we haven't ever seen a starling so much as look at one, we can say for sure that martins will nest in them. Charlie has found one additional benefit to his hole design - it also excludes entry by the Eastern Screech Owl, an occasional predator on martin.

Obviously, a starling-proof entrance hole is a major break-through in our efforts to help the Purple Martin. The PMCA encourages its members to give Charlie's hole-design a try, then report back to us. Great care must be exercised when making this hole. If you cut it 1-1/4" high, instead of 1-3/16" (just 1/16th of an inch too large), starlings may get in and you would unfairly give the hole failing marks. If you make it 1-1/8" high (just 1/16th of an inch too small), martins won't be able to get in.

Because Moncton, New Brunswick is at the northern limit of the martin's breeding range, martins are frequently decimated by any type of prolonged, bad weather that eliminates their aerial food supply. Charlie has found a way to increase the number of days his martins can survive such forced fastings - he heats their houses so they can conserve energy while they are holed up, both day and night. He made a specially-built martin house (see Fig. 5), and ran an underground 110 volt line to it. The pole supporting the house has an on/off switch, a fuse box, and a remote thermometer that tells at a glance, the temperature inside the compartments. A thermostat in the house is set to turn the heat on and off whenever compartment temperatures fall outside of a pre-set range. Each compartment has a double floor, and under the floor there are three passes of greenhouse wire, with a 450 watt element. Distributed among his 25 rooms, that's about 18 watts per room. Charlie says that his setup is sufficient to keep the rooms up to 30 degrees above outside temperatures.

The house is also equipped with thermostatically-controlled ventilation louvers. Whenever the attic gets too hot, valves open on the ends of the attic, and allow air to be sucked up through the rooms. When it cools off, they close, so there is no draft through the rooms.

Such innovations aren't without their drawbacks, however. One time when the heat was on in Charlie's martin house, a lightning storm created a power surge and welded the points of the thermostat closed. This caused the heat to remain on constantly, even after the weather warmed up. This caused the compartments to overheat, hard-boiling the eggs in 22 nests, before Charlie caught the problem. He has since, modified his setup.

Charlie is also the first person to ever mount a video camera in the back of a martin house for an entire nesting season. What he did, and what we learned, is the subject of the article beginning on page 10 of this Update.