Purple Martin Forum

Roger, Thanks for the update ! This makes record keeping of purple martin colonies so easy. I have it on my phone in my OneDrive and makes monitoring a satellite colony a breeze . The Summary Page, Averages ,Occupancy, Hatching and Fledging rate pages give a landlord so much information . The auto f...

Weekly photo of the late nest and the party that showed up for the fledging !

Last week nest check at a site I manage revealed a late nest with one young . All other nest were fledged and today check looked good with parents feeding regularly !

They are Hungry! Have around 20 birds, this colony eats scrambled eggs flipped to them and on a platform. Tonight some of the visiting martins finally started to get the hang of catching eggs in the air. I think I was colder then the birds by the time they quit eating with the wind.

Rick

I added access collars and Troyer tunnels with collars, tight fit but got them in.

I hope the attachments work? Rick

Last year in spring if flipped crickets for hours until a female took one, then they all joined in. This year I did the eggs and it worked great. If I put eggs, crickets and soaked mealworms on the feeding station the mealworms are the last to go.

Rick

Thanks ! I added to my One Drive, now I can open it on my phone and enter the data . This will work great
when doing nest checks at other sites. Love how it gives you the projected hatch date and fledge date by just
entering in when the eggs were laid

Rick

I also did a lot to my Alamo, plastic slides, added tunnels, brake winch, cable upgrade, added a round steal pipe inside the pole and lined inside with cork!

Louise,

You are correct , we have no predator guards on the poles! I have them on my poles with no martins lol. Thanks for pointing that out.


Rick

Send them back down this way !

Rick

WOW ! that is a great fledged rate. Did you supplement feed that cold and rainy week? Was it the last week in June ?

Rick

I did not see any starling on the trip at all, just lots of house sparrows! On the beach the first day I seen migrating martins, they were flying about 10 feet above us in groups of 3-9 . What was odd is they never made a sound at all. They would then circle up and out over the open water going nort...

Last week I got to check out some Caribbean Martins in Puerto Rico . Each pipe in this hotel entrance had a nest !

here is a photo of a nature line gourd with added access cap

Louise, it seems that everyone thinks we don't have a heat built up in northerns states. When conditions are just right our bird houses become bird cookers. Our last batch of blue birds fledge the last week of August. The photo below was taken 7/31/2011, upper 80's not a lot of humidity. The blue bi...

dick. After reading your post again and seeing the words solar venting together, it gave me a new thought. How about a solar powered fan on top of the vent stack ? I don't no much about solar power ,I think solar panels produce DC current. I know they sell small DC fans ,I have them on my reef tank ...

We were in the 50's today so I put the vent stacks on for a photo. I did up the size to 1" pvc on the two that are connected to the gourds facing southeast and southwest. The gourd facing northwest is shaded by the house untill late afternoon and the northeast has shade all afternoon. The 1" vent ke...

bk

Here is a photo of pvc venting on a lonestar alamo. The 4 vent stacks are not on in the photo. They are 2' long and painted black with a T on the tops.

Rick

Bill,

If the trap is like the one in the photo, it may fit tight on the nuts on the side keeping it from tripping. I use it in the lonestar alamo and had the same problem. I added plastic strips to keep the nuts away from the sides of the house .

Rick

Delma,
You could try some peanut butter suet. I make my own and the blue birds love it. You can also try raw peanuts . Here is a photo of a young one waiting for me to put more in the feeder! The young never seem to learn to eat off the suet feed but the adult can.

Rick