Purple Martin Forum

Back in 2011-2012 I moved into a new house. The people that bought my house did not want the colony (30 pair) so at the end of that season I took the housing with me. When they began to arrive the next spring I drove by and for about a week they were just circling the yard looking for the housing. T...

My AAA is 2 inch and has 16 gourds on it. It is 10 plus year old and has just started to get a slight bend this year. I do try to lower it during forecasted storms but it's not uncommon in Indiana to have pop up storms where I can't get to it. I think adding more gourds would be a regional thing. So...

I built both of my T14's and made my own poles. If you happen to have a plumbing contractor near by or a scrap yard I would check there. The first one I bought a 20 foot piece of 3 1/2 inch galvanized pipe for my pole. Back then the pipe was only 3.00 per foot. Since than it has gone up quite a bit ...

Depends on how you look at it. $50.00 is a lot cheaper than having a rack full of martins tip over during a wind storm. Basically 100% of the people who have martin houses have their housing on a pole that is in the ground. If there was a cheap and reliable way to have portable housing all of us wou...

I can't picture anything that is truely portable and would hold up to winds etc. might be easier to buy the ground stake and cement it in. If they don't get martins you can remove the pole and cut the stake off at the ground.

You might post the make and model or pictures of the housing you plan to put up. Not all housing systems are the same (like everything else in life) and you get what you pay for. If you are serious about maintaining a colony it is better to get a quality housing system from the beginning. Many peopl...

Only option I've ever seen from Troyers is round or Conley II. Maybe someone else is changing them up somehow. I have been using Troyer Gourds with Conley II's now for many years and have only ever had one breach. It took a couple days but I got it trapped and no others have ever been able to get in.

When they are on the ground I think they are big enough to fly and ill pick them up and give them a slight toss. Sometime that's all it takes, if they can't fly after the toss and flutter back to the ground I put them in the cavity they came from or one with similar size babies in in. Good to know y...

Male and females will both have light colored undersides until the year they are born and then the first year back from their first migration. The second time coming back the males will be all dark. It's one of the things that takes some time you learn being able to pick out the males from females w...

Wood 4x4 post can twist and warp a lot, causing the rack to get stuck in an up or down position. There was some old threads on here years ago from people who built their own out of wood. I was thinking they had better luck using 2x4's with a piece of plywood in between them to make something similar...

I am sure it has happened as nothing is set in stone with mother nature but I have never heard of martins abandoning active nest due to their urge to migrate south. If I had parents that stopped returning to a nest that had young that have not fledged I would assume they (parents) were killed.

I think you will be a lot happier if you save some money up over the winter and purchase something a little sturdier than the tri tell pole. I started out trying them and they just don't hold up well if you get any wind at all. The first one I had a plastic house on the top and it was bent the first...

Visitors are a good thing, the more young Martins that see your place the better the odds one of them will decide to stay next year as SY’s. That said martins are communal nesters by nature so it’s not as easy as setting up a house and getting them to move in. I have started 2 colonies of my own and...

I have never painted the interior of a T14. The same amount of light will come through the opening no matter what the inside color. The only thing I paint on the inside of my T14's is about an inch or so around the opening just to help protect it from the rain. If I were you I would go ahead and put...

Tree swallows can be the biggest obstacle getting a colony started. The good news is once you get returning martins they will not be ran off by the TS. Now that I have an established colony I just leave the martin housing closed up until martins start to return. The TS are usually several weeks ahea...

Having all nests abandoned in your T14 plus some other nests abandoned makes me think you have a predator issue. Owls (or other predators) could be attacking at night and caused the others to feel unsafe and leave for another colony.

You never know with mother nature, but typically martins that have not been supplemental fed in the past would not take eggs from a tray this time of year when they are not really hungry due to days of rain etc. If you are seeing martins pecking around in the food tray they might be getting the egg ...

If you are finding feathers and wings on the ground I would bet you have a raccoon that has either scared off or killed the martins at your colony at night. Do you have any pictures of your predator guards (if you have any)?

I might be missing some info. If you have nests with only 16 day old or so nestlings in it the adults shouldn’t have just left. What kind of predator guards do you have and how many pair did you have this year? Based solely on your initial post it I think something else could be going on,

Looks like it's working, how high is the top of it from the ground? The recommended height is at least 48 inches as some animals could jump up that high and I have seen pictures of longer rat snakes reaching there head up to the top of a guard that is too low and able to bypass it. I remember being ...