Congrats Hershbergers. Those are some great stats/ Banner year/

Hi Ed,
Good to hear that martin appears to be doing fine. After think more about your concern, I do feel it is in fact a rare event.

As Brad mentioned and is very important; do not lower a martin house at night.

Hang in there BillyJR. Good to see everyone is on top of the supplement feeding. This week will be another trying week with forecast rain rain rain.

I'm leaning toward great horned owl attacks.

Hi Dick, A capped egg is when the babies start to hatch the half egg shell may flip over on top of another unhatched egg, therefore capping that unhatched egg. When you do nest checks, look for these capped eggs and if you find one, carefully remove the half spent eggs shell from the unhatched egg. ...

P.S. He is in the Mille Lac Lake area with the Ogibwa Tribe.

If you can contact Kelly Applegate, president of the Minnesota Purple Martin Working Group, you can get some great information and insight into this specific area of concern.

At your location, the SY subbies have plenty of time to continue showing up. I wish you the best in growing a huge colony.

This is a prime example of why we should all do nest checks. Another baby martin saved by a vigilant landlord. Congrats . : )

Hi Ed, I have never had this problem at my location in 14 years. But I can see how a martin can get itself in trouble with these rare unseen areas. No product it perfect and suspect that this will probably never occur again. I think it is a good idea for all landlords to check treads every year for ...

Another long shot guess is possibly a small hummingbird that might be misidentified as an insect.

Steve, Do you have any metal chirpy nest boxes and if so, do you like them or not ?

Thanks Archer, It was interesting looking over the progression of the SREH. I use the Conley 2 entrance and have had excellent results here in Iowa. There is an ongoing discussion throughout the US about starling sizes from southern states to northern states and their ability or inability to breach ...

Go ahead and shoot the starling and keep your martin housing up.

Hi Mike, Congrats and yes it is waiting for a mate or other martins to come around. If you have a feeding platform or a raised platform it is good to place no oil prepared used small pieces of scrambled eggs during cold wet weather; supplement feeding. Or frozen and then thawed crickets. Cleaned cru...

I have never seen this before, but my guess is it may be dragonflies since their quick mimicking flight matches that of a dragonfly chasing another dragonfly. If this is indeed the case, I have a feeling the dragonflies days are numbered.

Hi Tim, This is great news after all those years of trying for a new colony at your home location. Hopefully they will have a successful fledge rate and all survive their first year. As you know it is a numbers game the first few years of starting a new colony and we need all we can get from your ne...

The only time see a sparse nest is when there are SY pairs. SY pairs sometimes have poorly built nests and only an egg or two.

Starling on the left, but unsure of the bird on the right. Starlings have long pointy beaks. Martins have short black beaks.