Purple Martin Forum

I set a trap in one of my gourds to catch a HOSP but caught a Martin, I saw the sparrows and Martins coming and going in the same gourd and it was my luck to get the Martin. He was released with no problem though. However after that the HOSP or Martins avoided that gourd. I bought a sparrow live cat...

You won't regret putting up a Troyer system, it's an easy way to landlord Martins. I try to have my gourds cleaned and ready to go about mid to end of February, I think you should be good shooting for end of February.

I also have the Troyer deluxe 12 gourd rack with the Conley 2 entrance (and tunnel of course) on a two inch square pole, three inch is available but the two inch version is fine for 12 gourds. Mine has been up for years in all kinds of weather conditions, wind gusts of 40 mph are fairly common in th...

Hi neighbor! We're about 30 miles west of you. I have 12 Troyer gourds with Conley 2 openings (and a tunnel.) The only undesirables I have are sparrows. One or two years ago I found a dead adult in one of the tunnels after everybody left for the season. I have no idea what happened to it, its wings ...

I just checked my weather station records for June which is when the babies were doing most of their growing. Our high was 94 but mostly we were under 90F. We have the usual white gourds and typically we have a nice breeze early summer which must help keep the gourds ventilated. I think for next sea...

Congrats on your success! We're very pleased with about 25+ fledged this season. They got out of the gourds before we hit triple digits (105F) and had several very hot days in a row. Our last rain was July 2 and our Martins left about July 7. We have 16 inches of rain so far this year which is prett...

I had two little ones that I had to return to gourds this year, where they went was basically an educated guess but keeping records of nest checks helped get close.

They should be fine, congrats on the soon to be fledgies. I have gourds with a modified rectanglular opening. Don't remember what they are called but they are starling resistant. The Martins have no problem coming and going.

Welcome. I've had luck playing an electronic Martin call starting at 4 AM, noon and 5 PM. After two or three years it wasn't necessary to play the call as we had regulars show up. Good thing because it broke.

Congratulations on a successful season Mike. It's taken me maybe five years to have five nesting pairs, sometimes in prior years I've seen a bunch of Martins flying around overhead. I assumed they were from other nesting sites or were migrating.

90 - holy cow! I'll bet there's not a flying insect left for hundreds of yards around your condos. Since we had a very successful season I'm going to add another pole and 12 gourds before next season.

Yippee! All of my Martins have fledged, nobody was left behind. By my count, I had 25 or 30 fledge :) . Had one new HOSP nest which I pulled out and treated all of the gourds with 5% Sevin for the occasional visitors. One of the gourds had two eggs about 14 days ago and they are still there so those...

Check the YouTube live stream of the purplemartin.org nest cam, I think those chicks are about 12 days old. Yours does look a bit scruffy compared to them. I found two wren fledglings on the ground today, one was really young and one could almost fly. The parents were alarming in the tree but nothin...

My gourds are cleaned and hung around April, our only undesirable nesters are HOSP at our location so I keep a close watch for them and the Martins. I've found the sighting reports don't correlate with our location for whatever reason but regardless it's still a helpful indicator of the migration.

I keep checking for escapees but haven't had any since the first two and my second mite treatment was successful :) All of the chicks should fledge in the next week or so. I'm quite pleased with my success this season and I've learned a bunch about being a good landlord from you experienced folks he...

From what I've read, I don't think they return but maybe someone with more experience will chime in.

Hey Whippy, haven't seen them actually fly out so far but I'm not always watching.

My Martins get a bit fussy and I get dive bombed a couple of times when I lower my gourds but they quickly settle down when I raise it back up. The chicks seem oblivious when I open their gourd. It's for the greater good. I rescued two jumpers on different days so be sure to check at the pole bottom...

One of my gourds fledged in the last 2 or 3 days. Seven gourds should fledge in the next 7 to 10 days; found three eggs in a previously empty gourd which was a surprise.

Saw my very first set of chicks on 5-26 in gourd #3 and today's nest check gourd #3 was empty so it's been about a month since they hatched. So I think we have four or five youngsters flying around somewhere. To my surprise there are three Martin eggs in gourd #11, this is first time there have been...