Purple Martin Forum

HI DLN. In answer to some of your questions. Housing is all gourds. Big Bo's, BO9's, BO11's, Troyer Horizontals, Troyer Verticals, & Super Gourds. Gourds are 4 or 8 to the pole at about 14 ft high and are equally faced to North, South, East, & West. All were pre-nested with pine straw. The temps: Fe...

Forum Admin: Question/Suggestion: Given the wide spread extent and devastation of this weather event, has any consideration been given to creating a reporting mechanism for landlords to report related male and female deaths to study the impact on martin numbers this and next season? Thanks. Reportin...

Have a question that others may have also...
If you have never had any martins banded at your site and may like to consider having banding done,
and you do not know any authorized banders...... How do you go about finding / contacting someone
near your location that does banding?

Will this work with Open Office? Thanks.

Sorry to report that my first (very early) arrival did not survive. :-( Don't know if it was the cold last night or she was weak from her trip North, or a combination of the two. Found her on the ground this morning. Hope my next arrivals will be more in line with my normal arrival times when the we...

Amazing.... My earliest prior arrivals in the past was Jan 30th. At a little after 10 AM this morning was amazed to see an ASY female sitting on the entrance porch of a Troyer Horizontal. Eventually flew around the area for a while, came back and landed on the gourd, finally flying away. Will be kee...

Mike, home-made racks, variety of gourds: BO9's, BO11's, Big BO, Troyer verticals & horizontals, & super gourds. The martins like the gourds with tunnels. Since we're in the same area of the country, I'll make one recommendation, predator guard for snakes. I didn't realize there were so many around ...

Hi Mike. Congrats on your year. Looks like I'm located just to the East of you. Your idea of a gourd rack is good. After adding a lot of gourds here at my site the martins just used them even though the houses had enlarged cavities. My season is coming to an end, I only have two gourds with young re...

Put up my first housing in 2010. Lookers till 2012 when I had 8 pair.

Hi Rodger, I currently am using an RCA. It's an older model and am probably gonna be looking for something better.

I have used a hand held recorder the past few years in doing nest checks. With 140 gourds to check its certainly easier than picking up and putting down the clipboard after checking each gourd. I believed I obtained my small digital recorder either at WalMart or Staples.

I use a small spring clip attached to the decoy so I can position how I want. I also use a zip tie from the clip to the perch rod so the hawk don't make off with my decoy.

I only use FB when I have to, and only for pm related stuff. On the forum you can find what you need and it's organized. My personal comparison (and I may be wrong) the forum is like a well organized office, FB to me is like you opened the office door and threw all the stuff in. Hope everyone has/ha...

personally I would leave them. I had a nest once that had eggs for a long time and I was close to give up on them when they started hatching. Good luck.

I tried the netting, but still had some get through, and also caught several. Had snake issue every year until I installed the electric fence charger guard.

Joe, congrats on your season. If your birds fledged about two ago think you don't have to worry. Maybe some of the ones you're seeing now are checking out your site for next year. I only have a couple of nest left to fledge in the next week, with one late nester to fledge in July. Again, congrats.

Not sure what kind of bugs you have, but believe the sevin should take care of it as it kills a large variety of insects. Good luck.

Whippy - I like what you did. Will try to post pic and you'll see why I used pvc because of the way I have my gourds mounted.

Will try to do that. May take me a couple of days.

Whippy... I have 12 of the Big Bo's that I added the tunnels to and like you mine tilted down on the entrance side. Here is what I did to solve the balance problem. Items needed: Lexel, drill, quarter inch bolts with extra washers and nut, and a short length of 3/4 in pvc pipe. Drill a hole thru pvc...