1996 Landlord of the Year, Edwin Donath

Edwin W. Donath:
1996 PMCA Landlord of the Year

Reprinted from: Purple Martin Update 7(4)

Louise Chambers
Purple Martin Conservation Association

Ed Donath replaces a nest tray in his #4 martin house. The house has a wire mesh frame, foam insulation, and an aluminum exterior. The porch and entrance hole are placed 3&1/2 inches above the compartment floor to more accurately mimic the woodpecker cavities martins once nested in. Removable plastic nest trays, with Styrofoam inserts, make nest replacements an easy task. A small cup inside the compartment holds mealworms during bad weather. The bottom compartment holds a removable House Sparrow/starling trap.

The PMCA is pleased to honor Edwin W. Donath, of Arlington Heights, IL, as their 1996 Landlord of the Year. A landlord since the early 1960's, Ed is responsible for many practical innovations in the field of martin conservation. Ed was quick to observe deficiencies in the first housing designs he used, and has never ceased making improvements to the housing at his colony site. While some of his modifications arose from the special needs of a northern landlord, they are applicable to all parts of the martins' breeding range. An early advocate of larger compartments, Ed also experimented with removable nest trays, insulated nest inserts, nest material replacement for parasite control, and other management features. The most unusual and eye-catching development at the Donath site is supplemental feeding: The 17 or so pairs of martins that nest in Ed and Joan's backyard never go hungry no matter how foul the weather. You almost have to see it to believe it, and we have never seen anything like the video of Ed's sleek, glossy martins, eating mealworms at a special feeder. Since the hot, dry summer of 1988, they have been eating mealworms placed on the house porches, and later were "trained" to come to an elevated platform feeder for mealworms, calcium, and now, scrambled eggs. With an aerial insectivore like the Purple Martin, such a feat is remarkable. Since first training the birds to come to the feeder for mealworms and other food, Ed has found that at certain times of year, the martins' survival may hinge on the food he supplies. During periods of bad weather that reduce insect availability, adult martins take food from the feeder to their nestlings, as well as gobble down thousands of mealworms or dozens of eggs themselves. Ed's one wish, he tells us, is that more landlords will make an effort to improve their housing, using some of the ideas he has found useful, and that more landlords will make the effort to train the birds at their sites to accept mealworms and other supplemental foods. It's not easy, and takes a fair amount of time and even more patience. But when spring weather turns wintry again, or a cold, wet spell settles in when there are dozens of nestlings to be fed, it is well worth it. This year when many landlords lost adult birds and/or nestlings to cold weather, the Donath site had an overall success rate of 74% (eggs to fledglings), and out of 79 young that hatched in 17 nests, 66 fledged. An excellent fledge rate for this year, particularly with an average of 3.9 young per nest.

Ed's most recent innovation may be his most far-reaching yet. His initial concept and design for a landlord calculator wheel that accurately projects hatching and fledging dates evolved into what is now the Purple Martin Prognosticator, one of the best landlord aids ever developed (see article on page 6.) Using a Prognosticator in conjunction with regular nest checks, landlords will now know exactly when eggs should hatch and young fledge. No more guessing, counting backwards on calendars, no more wondering if the young from a nest fledged or disappeared before they were capable of flying. The Prognosticator was designed after Ed began the PMCA's Project Martinwatch and found the formula for the calculations complicated. He hopes that with the Prognosticator to simplify nest checks, many more landlords will participate in Project Martinwatch, and that the accurate data will better aid those landlords in managing their sites. He further hopes that it will help Project Martinwatch accumulate the data necessary to determine why martins are declining over the northern half of their breeding range. Ed has given a truly valuable new tool to all martin landlords, in the hopes that it will aid his beloved friends, the Purple Martins. We all owe Ed our thanks, and this Landlord of the Year award is just one way we have of saying thank you to him.

Now age 72 and retired since 1986, Ed has a B.S. in Physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II. For much of his career, he was employed in the design and production of industrial instruments in the fields of air velocity, dew point, and temperature measurement. In 1978, he changed careers and worked as a photoengraver in a plant close to his home until he retired. Ed and his wife of 49 years, Joan, have three daughters and four grandchildren. In 1975, Joan took up the hobby of breeding cage birds, and, Ed states, "the skills she perfected in her bird room are applied to our martins' well-being, with tender loving care." The following paragraphs recount the Donaths' colony site history, as provided by Ed.

Lunch on the way: An SY female who hatched at Donath's in 1996, and returned to nest there in 1997, takes a piece of scrambled egg for one of her nestlings. After suffering weather-caused nestling mortality in the summer of 1992, Ed determined he would not lose martins to bad weather again. A great amount of patience and time were invested in training his martins to take nontraditional food from a platform feeder. Other extras offered are oystershell and cuttlebone.

"In 1963 we put up our first martin house in Arlington Heights, a suburb 30 miles northwest of Chicago. From the back of our lot, to the north, were farms and wetlands and many active martin colonies. The first time we raised our Department of Agriculture-design house on a standard tilt-down pole, an adult male martin landed on the roof, before the securing pin was in place."

"Today it's a very different world that our birds live in. The wetlands have been drained and the farms are replaced with an endless array of asphalt streets and shingled roofs. The mosquito abatement bureaucracy bombards us with insect-killing chemicals. I doubt if there are any other active sites in this area. The only reason we still have martins is because once they arrive here they are never cold, wet, or without a supplemental food supply. Their ready-made Styrofoam nests save time and energy. House Sparrows and European Starlings are kept in check, and so far we have not had any attacks by predators. Nests are replaced when necessary to eliminate blowflies and other parasites. The number of pairs in our colony site has been kept at 20 or less, so as not to antagonize our neighbors. If we ever lost our small colony for one season, we would have no chance of attracting a new group of martins to our yard in a neighborhood now overgrown with trees. An interesting standoff began about 20 years ago, when large numbers of crows moved into town. The crows drive away the few owls and hawks that pass by. The five or more pairs of Common Grackles that nest in our yard keep the crows out, and also chase away any starlings that we missed trapping during the winter."

"In 1968, after observing the nesting martins for six years, we came to the following conclusions: 1.) The 6" x 6" nest compartment was too small for a clutch of six young. There were always some being pushed out of the crowded compartments. 2.) The entrance to the compartment was placed too low (bottom of entrance hole 1 inch above the floor.) The early arriving adults were building mud dams that plugged up the bottom half of the 2&1/2" diameter holes. On two occasions their dam actually had to be cut down, as they had trapped themselves. 3.) There were too many nest compartments per house, and the territorial disputes raged on all season. What a waste of energy! Usually the occupancy rate was one nesting pair per floor, whether there was one compartment or three. 4.) A roosting peg close to the box was needed. When preening their feathers or just resting, the adults chose the nearby utility wires, where they could perch more comfortably than on the house porches. The ever-present House Sparrows took advantage of the martins' absence by building nests as fast as possible. 5.) The ventilation needed improvement. On very hot days the young suffered terribly. 6.) There had to be easy access to the nesting compartments so blowfly-infested nests could be replaced. I was made aware of blowflies by a fellow member of National Association for the Protection and Propagation of Purple Martins and Bluebirds of America (NAPPPMBA). Recently, the PMCA informed me that these flies are not found in all parts of the country, and are more prevalent in northern areas. No wonder there are so many more martins in the south."

"We decided to build a new house that hopefully eliminated all of the above problems and after it was accepted by the martins, to change the old house as best as possible. Both the bluebirds and the martins were said to have nested originally in abandoned woodpecker cavities. In the NAPPPMBA the bluebird people were making individual nestboxes that resembled woodpecker cavities, with the entrance hole at the top of a deep cavity. The martin people were building houses with many small compartments that had the entrance hole near the bottom of the cavity, very unlike a woodpecker cavity. A gourd house is a closer approximation, which is no doubt the reason gourds are so popular with martins."


Ed Donath's first martin house was soon modified to have eight, 2-room compartments. The flip-up half-doors allowed Ed to do nest replacements for parasite control; the original design did not allow any access to compartments during the nesting season.	Two of Ed's later designs. Both offer the martins more "privacy" space between nest compartments, private perching areas, and insulated compartments. The house on the right is topped with a mealworm feeder.

"Not wanting to make too big a change in the rooms of house #2, we only increased the distance from the floor to the bottom of the entrance hole to 2 inches. In later houses we raised the entrance and porch up to 3&1/2 inches above the floor and plan to go even higher in future houses. The five-room house with the star-shaped roof was put up in 1969 and is still in use today. The compartments are twice the volume of the 6-inch cubes of house #1. Each has its own night light in one corner which keeps it about 18o F. warmer than the outside temperature when a 7-watt bulb is in place, and 10o F. warmer with a 4-watt bulb. No thermostat is needed and they are on night and day until the outside temperature rises above 70o F. In very cold weather the pairs stay in their own compartment where they can move closer to the heat and are protected from burns by a metal shade. The light does not bother the martins, who have been known to choose nesting sites near lights. A rubber ball was glued to the end of the perches on the nest boxes to prevent the landlord from getting his eye poked when lowering the house. The ball became the most popular spot for preening feathers and scratching because it's easy to hang on to with one foot. The 2-inch diameter ball costs one dollar and lasts 3 or 4 years. The well-separated territories, with their "keep 'em at home" roosting peg, eliminated most of the chance-encounter battles that plagued our first house."

"Starting in 1969 we placed a 1&1/2" thick layer of oat straw in each nest box to reduce the number of trips the birds would make to the ground when completing their nests. The single-year birds just added green leaves. Once a week we lowered the house and replaced any blowfly-infested nests with clean straw and leaves. Our #3 house, put up in 1985, has four large rooms and a central cavity with a light bulb for heat and an exhaust fan. It was sized to accept a removable plastic nest tray. The purpose was to speed up the nest replacement process. A clean nest could be prepared ahead of time in a second tray and the young quickly transferred. All the trays had a Styrofoam nest bowl in the far corner and were supplied with a layer of oat straw between the entrance and the nest bowl. The older pairs added their own pile of sticks and mud to form a dam near the entrance. We saved these trays from year to year, so they started with a completed nest just like in ancient times. Cleaning and storing the nests became a chore, so we added a Styrofoam dam which made the nests easy to clean with a garden hose. An hour in the sun and they were ready for reuse. The martins no longer brought any mud into the nests. We could now change nests as early as three days after hatching, and as often as necessary for the rest of the season. At about 3 weeks of age the young are banded and given a last tray with no dams or nest bowls. To give them a good toe hold, a flat piece of foam covered with absorbent bedding, such as dry pine needles or kiln-dried pine shavings, is provided."

House #4 is raised in just seconds by pulling on the rope attached to the counter balance end of the pole. The other end of the same rope is attached to the bottom of the house and is pulled taut to keep the house from swaying excessively. The rope and pole are locked in place.

"Our first house was finally retired in 1988 and in its place is a house of somewhat radical design. The structural strength is provided by walls and floors of welded steel wire. The curtain walls and roof are foam board covered with thin aluminum that insulates the rooms from a hot or cold exterior. The rooms are 7" x 7" x 11" deep; each accepts a removable plastic nest tray. On a hot day the air flows up through the floors and out the doors. In spring the bottom floor is sealed and two light bulbs in a central shaft circulate warm air through the house. The house hangs from a pipe, like a seat on a two-spoke Ferris wheel, and lowers or raises in 4 seconds. Homemade box traps for sparrows and starlings can replace nest trays with a minimum of disturbance. Trapping starts in early March and by the time the martins arrive a month later, nest competitors are almost nil."

"In prior articles I have gone into great detail in explaining the supplemental feeding of martins [see Update 4(3), pages 2-4, and Update 6(1), pages 6-8.] What's new in the 1997 season is that I fed my martins almost exclusively on scrambled eggs. In fact, 62 dozen eggs for 17 pairs of martins and their young. The weather here was cold and wet during April and May, and they took food every day. Even though they never went hungry, the early nesters started their clutches 10 days late. The birds new to our colony were about 3 weeks late. The demand tapered off to nothing in early June. The first week in July the weather was bad again and I was serving two dozen eggs a day. Mild weather returned and for the rest of the season I had no customers at my Orange Star Feeder. This year I had seven new SY birds that had to be conditioned to accept food. I used 20,000 mealworms getting them accustomed to the feeder. It is not an easy task. I also fed mealworms on the few days in Spring when the weather was absolutely deadly, just to be sure none went hungry."

-1996 Landlord of the Year, Ed Donath.

The best way to thank Ed Donath for what he has done is to follow his example. States his friend, 1994 Landlord of the Year Terry Suchma, "Ed is a man who truly loves martins, and is constantly pondering upon Purple Martin matters and how to improve them. He is a mentor to many, and always takes the time to help landlords so that they, in turn, help the martins prosper. He is always thinking "martins," to their benefit."

Ed Donath's motivation is the martins, and his sole desire is that more landlords will try some of the improvements that have aided the martins at his site. So how about giving one or more a try? Nest trays for nest replacement/parasite control? Styrofoam nest bowls for dry, insulated nests? Regular nest checks and record-keeping, as in Project Martinwatch? And perhaps the most work to achieve, but the most valuable to the martins, supplemental feeding. If we can each improve one additional aspect or feature of our sites each year, imagine how our martins will thrive!