Being the Executive Director of the PMCA brings me in contact with thousands of martin hobbyists, so I can honestly tell you that I know of no landlord whose level of enthusiasm for martins exceeds that of Andy Troyer. We are, therefore, proud to be honoring Andy Troyer with our second, annual, "PMCA Landlord of the Year" award. We are honoring him because of the numerous contributions he has made to improving the ways martins are managed. In fact, we are so impressed with what he is doing (and has done), that we're certain many of his innovations will revolutionize how martins are managed in the future.

Fig. 1. PMCA 'Landlord of the Year,' Andrew M. Troyer, doing a 5-day nest check on one of his four, active, martin houses. Note the low winch placement, the laminated pole, the hinge-open house doors, the built-in predator guard, and the gourd access doors.

First of all, Andy has designed, tested, and published a plan for a crank-up, wooden martin house that has many of the design features the PMCA has been promoting (see Figs. 1, 2). Second, he has created a drawer-like nest insert that can be slid in and out of the martin house for closer inspection of the nest and its contents. Third, he has found a simple and safe, chemically-free way to combat the deleterious effects of nest parasites on martins - changing their nests twice during the nesting stage. Fourth, he has devised a way to attach an access door to natural gourds, facilitating nest inspection. Fifth, he has perfected the design of a giant bait trap that catches thousands of English House Sparrows and European Starlings a year, and is nearing completion on a design for a repeating, nest-box trap. And lastly, he has discovered a simple, yet inexpensive way to capture martins after they have entered their compartments - we call it "Fishing for Martins." These are but a few of the creations this clever individual has come up with. On the next several pages, I describe each in more detail, but begin by telling you more about Andy.

Andrew Troyer is a 37-year-old Amish martin landlord who lives in Conneautville, PA, just 13 miles southwest of PMCA headquarters. By profession, he is a rope maker, but he spends so much time bird watching, tinkering with his latest invention, or monitoring his martin houses and bluebird trail that I tease him by saying 'he only makes rope in his spare time.' Andy has quite a sense of humor, so we both get a laugh out of this.

Andy is also a writer, a gardener, a philosopher, a bird and nature lover, and a husband and father. He and his wife, Lena, have five children (Marcus, Adam, Neva, Ruth, and Miriam) ranging in age from one to fifteen. This is just the family's third year living in Pennsylvania. They moved here in 1990 from an Amish settlement near Apple Creek, Ohio. In its third season, Andy's martin colony now numbers over 33 breeding pairs. He hopes to have 100 pairs by his fifth season here.

The Troyer home is located on a quiet, country road five miles outside of town. I love to visit, just to hear the silence; nothing but bird song fills the air. Nearby are Great Blue Herons, Belted Kingfishers, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Eastern Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, Bobolinks, Savannah Sparrows, and Eastern Meadowlarks. A slick of crushed eggshells on the drive is visited by Northern Roughwinged Swallows, as well as Barn Swallows and Purple Martins. Not too far away are swamplands that host Bald Eagles, while the woods and fields around the Troyer property are home to a wide variety of bird life, none of which go unappreciated by the Troyer family. On the kitchen wall, a giant chart, decorated by the children, lists all the species of birds the family has seen on and around their property for the year. At press time, it numbered 181 species!

I first met Andy in March of 1989 when his brother, Ben (who still lives in Apple Creek, OH) called the PMCA for help. A late winter storm had caught his earliest-returning martins. Since I needed photographs of martins sitting on snow-covered houses, I made the three-hour drive to Apple Creek. Waiting at Ben's house was Andy, and before you knew it, I was experiencing my first Amish buggy ride. This was the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

The following Spring, when his barn burned to the ground, Andy gave me the thrill of my lifetime - he invited me to attend an Amish barn-raising. There I was, along with over 400 Amishmen, putting up an entire barn in a single day, just like in the movie, "Witness." I was in charge of placing about 60 Barn Swallow nesting ledges in the new barn. At lunch time, we workers were served a fabulous meal by over 100 Amish women. To my surprise, many of the Amishmen were avid bird watchers, so I made many new friends that day.

Since the Troyers have now moved to Pennsylvania, and live so close, repeat expeditions to their place are common. Countless times, Andy has invited me to go along with him on his bluebird trail and to do nest checks on his martins. I must confess, though, the best part of these visits is the excellent, home-cooked meals Lena and the girls prepare. Throughout it all, Andy's family keeps turning out yard after yard of rope, using an old-fashioned, outdoor rope walk. The Troyer Rope Company manufactures dozens of types of rope and animal halters, and ships them all over the country. Besides being one of the finest human beings I know, Andy has become one of my dearest friends. Below, I describe the martin-helping innovations Andy has developed, and the reasons why we are honoring him as the PMCA's "Landlord of the Year."

I've been helping Andy with his martins for three summers now. And every time he invites me down he ends up surprising me with some ingenious, new invention. One of the most flattering of his creations is his latest martin house (See Figs. 1, 2). It's flattering because it's based on many of the principles the PMCA has been promoting, but he's added some features of his own (like nest inserts), and given it a distinctively Amish touch.

He calls this house the "Troyer T-14." It's a 14-room, red cedar house that cranks up and down the pole with a cable and winch, and has compartments that measure 6-1/2" x 11." The deeper compartments keep the nests totally dry and make it difficult, if not impossible, for owls to reach the nestlings or brooding parents. The doors open on hinges, and lock with hook and eyes. Another unique feature of this house is the way the four vertical units bolt together, forming the hollow shaft that the wooden post fits through. Andy has added a large, plastic predator guard to the bottom of the house to prevent cats, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and rat snakes from getting an easy meal of his martins. Andy has also discovered a better and stronger way to make wooden posts for erecting martin houses. Rather than use a solid, 20-foot-long, 4" x 6" post (which will warp and twist as it weathers), he sandwiches together (i.e., screws together) two 2" x 6" treated posts, with a 1" x 6" in the middle. These will resist twisting and be far stronger in the wind than a solid, conventional wooden pole.

We know our readers are going to be as excited by Andy's T-14 house design as we are, so are offering his published plans for sale through the PMCA. The plans include a useful list of 101 Do's and Don'ts for successful martin attraction.

One of the cleverest of Andy's innovations is his removable nest inserts (see Figs. 3, 4, 5). These are wooden, slide-in, "subfloors" that have a wooden "mud dam" perching divider in their middle and a circular cut-out "nest bowl" in the rear half to hold several handfuls of cedar shavings. The cedar shavings form an artificial, pre-made, nest, with some parasite-repelling tendencies. The wooden inserts set right on top of the compartment floors. To test whether martins liked these wooden inserts (with their nest bowl full of cedar shavings), Andy placed inserts in only half of his compartments, leaving every other one empty as a scientific 'control.' 1993 was the first year he tested the inserts, but the results were overwhelming - over 80% of the active martin nests were built in compartments with cedar-filled inserts! Perhaps because of these inserts with their pre-made nests, Andy's martins got off to a two-week head start on egg-laying, compared to our martins at the nearby PMCA colony site.

Andy has further improved his nest inserts since the photos for this article were taken. He now has added a 3-inch high, wrap-around wall on the back and sides of the inserts, made out of flexible, black plastic. He added these to help keep the nest and youngsters from falling out when the inserts are slid in and out of the nesting chamber.

Andy's inserts, used in combination with cedar shavings, have many obvious benefits. First of all, they keep the birds warmer and drier. Secondly, they save the birds a great deal of time and energy since they don't have to build much of a nest. Thirdly, the inserts allow for a quick and easy method of closely examining the contents of each nest. And finally, they make it easy to completely replace the nesting material during the nestling stage, thereby controlling nest parasites without the use of potentially-harmful pesticides. This nest-changing strategy of Andy's is described below.

Because of Andy's experience with changing the nests of the Tree Swallow and Eastern Bluebird while doing his weekly nest checks on his bluebird trail, he concluded that replacing the parasite-infested nests of martins would also be beneficial to their well-being. Anyone who has ever looked into a martin's nest after the young have hatched, knows that their nests become seething, writhing, beds of blood-sucking blowfly maggots, nest mites, and both larval and adult fleas. Even though martins have co-evolved with these nest-dwelling parasites and are able to raise their young despite of their depredations, studies have shown that they are detrimental to martin reproduction. Therefore, it seems desirable to make attempts to reduce their numbers. In the past, concerned martin landlords would use one or more of the following pesticide treatments to help control nest parasites in their martin housing: sulphur, Sevin (poultry dust), or No-pest strips. Others used more organic materials, such as rotenone, diatomaceous earth, tobacco, or cedar shavings. Some of these products work well on certain martin parasites, but not on others, plus their safety around birds is questionable. We feel that 'nest replacement,' (for those whose housing systems will allow it), is the very best (and also the safest) parasite treatment currently known. Here's how Andy does a nest change.

Andy usually begins his martin season by placing about an inch of cedar shavings in each nesting compartment, including his gourds. Arriving martins will kick the cedar around a bit, but end up building a make-shift nest on top of it. Then, after the young hatch and are about 10-days-old, Andy removes the nestlings, throws out the old nest, places a couple handfuls of fresh cedar shavings in the bowl, fashions a bowl-like depression, then replaces the nestlings into it (see Fig. 4.) (By the way, handling baby martins will not cause parents to abandon them - this is an old wive's tale.) But since the fleas and mites living on the birds lay fresh eggs that hatch quickly in the nest, (as do the eggs laid daily by visiting, adult blowflies) two nest changes are necessary. Andy repeats his nest-changing program in each nest when the young next reach about 20-days of age (he checks his nests every five days). As a result, Andy's nestlings are heavy and healthy, and he rarely finds any on the ground prematurely. We highly recommend his nest-changing technique as a chemically-free way to reduce parasite numbers in the nests of Purple Martins.

Perhaps the most inventive device Andy has come up with is his threaded access doors for natural gourds, described in detail on page 29 of this Update. In the beginning, he was opposed to using gourds, because of lack of nest-chamber accessibility. Despite this, he decided to give gourds a try anyway. He was amazed by how much the martins took to them and by the larger clutches of eggs they seemed to lay in them. But he was unhappy that they didn't have easy access. After contemplating this shortcoming for a while, he came up with the technique of attaching the tops of wide-mouth plastic jugs to them. Andy was so excited by how much these doors improved the manageability of gourds that he generously devoted the better part of two days helping me attach access doors to all the gourds the PMCA offers the martins at our research grounds. We love them! Now we can easily band and weigh nestlings reared in gourds, plus we are able to more accurately count eggs and nestlings. We're so excited by these access doors, that we're offering for sale, the jugs needed to convert natural gourds (see page 29 for details).

One of Andy's oldest inventions is his now-famous, walk-in, V-top trap (see Fig. 6). Birds enter the top entrance and can't find their way out. In the past 10 years he has trapped a total of 10,094 starlings and 4,856 House Sparrows. That's over 1000 starlings and 485 House Sparrows per year! One year alone Andy trapped a total of 2,735 starlings. The beauty of Andy's V-top trap is that it never needs to be reset, and the more birds it contains, the more likely others are to enter; trapped birds act as decoys for others of their kind. If a non-target species is captured, it can be released unharmed. A set of plans for building the Troyer V-top trap is available from the PMCA for $6.00, complete (PA residents add 36¢.) The plans contain a complete list of materials, eight black & white photos, assembly instructions, and hints for best trapping success. I should add, this trap is not for everyone - you must be willing to euthanize large numbers of House Sparrows and starlings. It works best in rural, or farm, areas and costs over $100.00 in materials to build.

As long as I have known Andy he has been trying to design the ultimate, repeating Starling/House Sparrow nest-box trap (see Fig. 7). Dubbed the "Troyer S & S Trap," it has had at least five, radically-different incarnations in the four years I have known him. To be really effective, such traps need to be placed at least 10-15' off the ground. Unfortunately, at this height, a ladder is needed to remove captured birds. To remedy this situation, Andy's early versions all had transparent PVC tubes leading down to ground-level holding cages from the stationary, elevated traps. His current version (Fig. 7), slides up and down on its own pole using a rope and pulley, and has numerous fake (painted) entrance holes. The trap is a super-stimulus for any cavity-hunting starling or House Sparrow because it resembles a martin house. But, because the trap is placed near a tall tree, martins won't be attracted to it. The real entrance hole has a perching rod above it, and a porch below it, making it the hole the starlings and House Sparrows will go to first. When the bird enters the cavity, its weight causes an internal chamber to fall, closing off the entrance hole, but opening an escape hole. The escape hole leads to the external holding cage. When the bird enters the holding cage, the internal chamber pivots back up, ready to catch another bird. Regardless of which form the Troyer S & S trap finally takes when it's ready for marketing, Andy will have both blueprints and traps for sale through the PMCA.

Because Andy's colony site is so close, I offered to band his nestling martins, beginning last year. But because of the disastrous weather of 1992 only 28 survived to banding age. The big surprise came in May of this year (1993) when three banded SY's showed up and bred at Andy's place in his wooden T-14's. Two were female and one was male. Since we were dying to know if they were his birds returning to their natal colony site, we captured them after their eggs had hatched, to get their band numbers. Sure enough, all three were Andy's. One of them had been reared in a gourd and the other two in wooden houses. Having three out of 28 nestlings (10.7%) return to breed at their natal colony site is about double the published norm.

Even more surprising is what happened in late June: a banded ASY male showed up at Andy's and started building a nest in a T-14. Since it was a banded ASY we knew it couldn't have been one of his birds. We captured it and found it was one of my birds from Edinboro Lake, 13 miles away, banded in 1991 as a nestling in an aluminum Trio Castle. Then in early July, a fourth banded SY bird (male) and was captured. It also turned out to be one of my birds, banded in 1992 as a nestling in a wooden house. If this meager sample size of 5 banded martins is indicative, it seems that martins do not necessarily imprint on the type of housing they were reared in. Two of the five were reared in a gourd or an aluminum house, but bred in one of Andy's wooden T-14's. Andy (not so modestly) claims that this was because of the superior quality of his new house design. Andy and I can't wait until next year to see how many banded martins return.

How we captured those five banded martins is another example of Andy's inventiveness. The first two were captured with nothing more than a long-handled fishing net. We just lowered the house about eight feet, waited for the parents to resume feeding, then ran up and covered the entrance hole with the net. In neither case did the trapped bird attempt to escape. We just opened the door and carefully grabbed the banded bird.

The other three banded martins were caught with a fishing pole! Andy prepared a simple, yet ingenious, shutter trap on the outside of the compartment, just above the entrance hole. The shutter pivoted on a loose screw and was held in the open position with a cotter pin stuck in a shallow hole. Monofilament fishing line was attached to the cotter pin and led to Andy's fishing pole 80 feet away. Once a banded bird entered its compartment, the line was tugged, pulling the pin out and dropping the shutter! The technique can also be used for capturing troublesome House Sparrows and starlings.

There wasn't enough room here to discuss Andy's bluebird trail, or the corncob ledges he puts up for Barn Swallows, or his cabin-sized bird feeder - his life truly does revolve around birds. He even carries binoculars with him in his buggy. Andy feels that life would be incredibly stale without birds, and even believes there will be birds to greet him in heaven. I know one thing for sure, Andy Troyer does all he can to share his love of birds with others, and does all he can to help birds. Purple Martins will surely benefit from all of his creations, as will martin landlords.