Purple Martin Forum

Hi friends, Last week was tough to get through. We worried so much for our Purples. We put hand warmers and we fed crickets. We know of three that survived. One was a Second Year (SY) banded male. We got the band numbers and we would like to report it but not sure how to go about that. We are kind o...

It is a digital camera with video capability. Mine is Casio Exilim EX-F1. So easy to operate, but it is not good in low light. It also doesn't have a built in stabilizer. I love this camera only for the slow motion movie feature, and I get very good results with perfect lighting conditions. For stil...

Last year during a cold spell, we flinged and flicked crickets, we left crickets in gords and on the bed and breakfast stand. Our PMs never ate our crickets. But we have a cricket stash ready and waiting to try again this year. I hope they will eat them this year because we are in for some nasty wea...

Jean - beautiful!!! You even got a short fight between the males! .... The music was perfect - what was that from? Thanks, Kathy! I'm really careful about music copyrights, so I always use AudioSwap provided by You Tube. Once I uploaded the movie, I edited it to pick one of the music tracts provide...

Matt, that's a great idea!!

Wow, Kelly, I love your profile picture. Are those IGs or Whippets? We have IGs -- three of our own and one foster.

This morning I played with my new camera a bit. I have a Casio Exilim (thank you, Bert for the Christmas present). It has a slow motion feature. Naturally, I had to take a slow motion bit on our Purple Martins! By the way, we have 12 now! Here is the link to the short movie. http://www.youtube.com/w...

So sorry about the loss of one of your scouts. We had a Cooper's Hawk that got in the habit of visiting our house before dusk every evening for a quick and easy meal. So we got in the habit of standing outside near our gourd racks armed with ice cubes. When the hawk would come in, we would yell and ...

Thank you, David, for coming and picking up the Purple Martin houses today. We are so happy there's going to be more housing for Purple Martins who need homes. We are grateful that the houses will be used again instead of sitting in our garage. It will be several weeks before we see our Purple frien...

Dave,

Thanks for your interest. I sent you a private message with my telephone number. Give me a call when you get a chance. I am so happy to find a home for the Coates.

....My first reaction was - oh no, I sure hope we're not losing another great, Martin landlord. :shock: Then when I saw you are simply converting to all gourds, there was a definite feeling of relief! :grin: Oh gosh no! We will be crazy Purple Martin people forever! :-) I was actually quite sad to ...

Dennis Forster wrote:I have a friend that would probably be interested. Do they come with a pole?

Yes, they come with poles. But for the larger of the two, it was a real struggle to raise and lower it. It is a big house. I would recommend a winch type pole system for that one.

Hi folks, Bert and I migrated our housing to gourds only. We have two Coates Purple Martin houses just sitting in our garage. Each are the double compartment type, and they are in good shape. One of them is fairly large. We have sports cars, so we can't transport the houses. If anyone wants them, th...

Hey folks, When we did nests checks yesterday, two of our gourds had lots of eggs in them. Eleven each. Normally, we see 4 to 6 on average. But Eleven? That is a bit unusual, isn't it? And to have two gourds like that is a big surprise for us. Would love to read comments from others about their expe...

During a lull in the rainy weather yesterday afternoon, I went out to flip crickets to the PMs. Bert told me to start flipping to the left part of our yard because he noticed several PMs were flying around in that area. That's when we noticed the bees were swarming from our bee hive, which is locate...

I guess I'm a whimp too! :-) I spent some time flinging crickets too and my arms and shoulders are sore. I have an interesting story to tell about our cricket flinging. I'll start a new topic to tell it.

JeanS, I have pine needles in bags, I will bring a free bag for you to the Houston purple martin meeting Tuesday if I can remember to load it. Thank you! By the way, we had a single male spend the night in one of our gourds last night. He hung around until 10 this morning. Not sure if he roosted wi...

For the last few years we have been helping the martins by laying a bed of pine straw for them at the beginning of the season. It seems to stay dry and clean. I've read that "white" pine is softest. Is there a feed store or Purple Martin supplier that sells "white" pine needles? We would like to pur...

Thanks for posting about this problem. We are witnessing predation by a Cooper's hawk every evening when the Martins come in at dusk. We witnessed four kills and several misses this year. Now, every evening we stand under the racks armed with ice cubes. When the Cooper attacks, we yell and throw ice...

Oh Tim, I'm so sorry about your mom passing away. You and your family have our deepest sympathy.