Purple Martin Forum

As the terrible freeze experience gets farther behind us, activity has picked up sharply around my house. I’ve seen many martins in the sky- a beautiful sight. I’ve got 4 to 6 martins continuously visiting and a pair confirmed in a compartment. Maybe more. These little guys don’t let anything get in...

You had too many pairs for all of them to not come back due to a snake. Id expect a few to reappear soon

Yep Pam will work. I’ve used glue traps a lot. Ive waited for the HS to build a nest and lay eggs. It’s never failed and have yet to have a martin to try to go inside an occupied (nest stuffed) HS cavity. But I guess it’s not impossible. Being able to make the hole smaller once the nest is HS occupi...

Have extremely aggressive English Sparrows in my neighborhood. Are gourds better choice than a 12 hole house? HS will go to both. Nothing stops them; If they can enter, they’ll figure out a way to nest in it. I have a house and gourds.. they’ve tried to nest in both. One pair was successful with a ...

I was able to get these Chirpy PM boxes hung. I’m starting with two. They are far better than I thought. I’ve only got a couple of martins here now. More will be arriving so I’m very curious to see how PM react to this style.

I remember you from last season. Housing looks great how many pair did you have last year? I had four pairs and a couple of extremely pesky SY males. I had quite a few chicks but not a lot of fledges due to mites. Gonna male sure it doesn’t happen Gain by doing better nest changes and maybe a littl...

Almost never use a glue trap. A martin will indeed sometimes enter a house sparrow nest. In large excluder gourds, I've even had them nest in the small space available after a house sparrow had nearly clogged the interior. Once when starting to clean out a house sparrow nest from such a gourd, with...

That’s great to hear. Good job on saving the female too.

After such a terrible week.. here’s a couple of videos to cheer us up. These two are one of my two couples that have been buzzing in and out all morning .. we’re up to about 80F today which is awesome. So many martins died over the week, so it’s exciting to see some signs of life down here in Louisi...

Forgive me for asking a question that probably has been asked. I couldnt find it using search. So if I understand correctly, the martins dont have a sense of smell, that is why checking the nests do not bother them. Correct? So if that is the case, can you sprinkle pepper in the nests and will that...

Mike.. are you using decoys? I have two decoys and can verify they work really well as decoys for hawks. Ive seen two hawk attacks where the hawk went for decoys as PM flew to safety. It’s an incredible thing to witness

Yeah.. if you’ve got PMs staying, no point in playing the music. Unless it’s for sheet entertainment purposes.. because the dawn song really gets the males all stirred up lol

I think some people forget the purpose of the scout report is to track the migration of the martins, not to specifically track "your martins". I have heard people say they have visitors to their site but they don't report them because they are not sure if they are "their" birds or just other birds ...

Hi.. it’s a 16 gourd system. Two levels, 8arms total with 2 gourds per arm. I use two L shaped hangers on each arm

I'll respond since those are my pics. I ordered 4 Chirpy Nests to check them out. I was impressed enough to order eight more for a total of 12. They are solid and built to last. You can tell they are not mass produced. They look like they were hand crafted in someone's garage or workshop. The innov...

Found some hanging PM housing called Chirpynest. Ordered two.. hoping to evaluate and report on how martins liked them.

The removable nest tray is really nice They seem very good against owls and hawks too.

Anyone own any of these?

David

No tally that I know of , but figure it’s in the thousands. But the bright side.. tens of thousands haven’t even arrived yet, followed by many thousands of SY PMs. Any survivors of this cold snap are definitely the healthiest, hardiest PM of the group, which is in itself a positive. Pretty sure mine...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ernn4EmCk&feature=youtu.be Here’s an ASY female my friend discovered laying on the ground nearly dead. He brought her inside , placed in a box with straw and allowed her to warm up. Then he used a dropper and got her to drink. Later she was eating (voraciously) mealwo...

Dsonyay, Maybe feed it like we do starved chick's? May shy from putting water down their mouth, could go down the wrong pipe. Try to dip the crickets or meal worms in the water. Yep.. he’s been hand feeding him mealworms soaked in water and little bits of plain scarmbled eggs. The male is doing well.

We found one on the ground very lethargic. Brought him inside. In a box with pine needles. Used a dropper and got him to drink water with eletrolytes. He perked up and is flying around now.
He didn’t eat, so we’re hoping he can catch a few bugs this afternoon as ot warms to near 50