Purple Martin Forum

I'm afraid none of your guesses look enough like what I saw to put me off my original guess, the white tern: http://i62.tinypic.com/10ztkk2.jpg The white-tailed kite was close but it has more of a raptor's head, and I can't get past the impression that what I saw looked exactly a long, skinny pure w...

This morning I saw two birds I could not identify sitting together on a powerline alongside the road as I bicycled past down a country road. When I got home I looked them up on he Interwebs, but the details I remember don't fit any of the common Tennessee birds. In fact, the most likely possibility ...

I've only managed to attract one pair of PUMAs to my house, and last year was their third season as my tenants. And it looked to be their best season ever in the making, with five eggs laid. But in one afternoon, in less than four hours, an unidentified nest robber removed all five eggs, broke them ...

Bittersweet news. I have a neighbor who has had a PUMA house in the back yard since they moved in, but they have never done any maintenance on it. Which is a shame, really, because it's in the middle of a wide-open lot and there isn't a taller tree for a good 100 feet in any direction. AFAIK, they n...

MamaBruff wrote:...Are we as a society so far removed from nature, that we no longer observe or understand it? *sigh*

Mary

Yes.

I figure it had to be a bird of some sort because I can't imagine anything that couldn't fly getting in and out in broad daylight without calling attention to itself. I'm thinking an SA male is a possibility because a nearby PUMA landlord took down his three houses (+12 gourds) when he moved out and...

I only have one pair of PUMAs, in their third season with me. My first egg had appeared Tuesday. There was another new one every day through Friday's nest check, when there were a total of four. She laid five last season so when I checked the nest at 1 p.m. on Saturday, I was expecting to find that ...

Last year, my lone pair of PUMAs laid their fifth and final egg on the 15th of May.

This year, they laid their first egg sometime between last evening and this morning. Everything about their return this year is running 7-8 days behind last season.

There is mud daubed in spots all over the front of the house. How weird. This is how it looks this morning: http://s1.bild.me/bilder/150113/5887245r_c_bunker_nest.jpg It looks as if it was built in three layers. I find it gratifying to see how the sophistication of their nest engineering improves as...

Who's up for Omelets?














(just kidding!)

I am amused at how my birds' nest building skills have evolved. I only have one pair so it's easy to track their progress. Their SY year (summer of 2011, my first season as a bona fide PUMA landlord), they built a scrawny little pile of sticks that wasn't substantial enough to prevent the eggs, when...

Who censored my previous post?

Sorry if it was too graphic for this forum but it was meant as instruction on how to kill a starling or HOSP quickly and with minimal pain but with absolute, 100% certainty.

When I was a kid, I came back from a dove hunt and dumped my game bag onto the patio floor to clean the birds. One of them flew away. It was limp and appeared lifeless when I had picked it up so it must have only been stunned or knocked out. And I never felt it fidget while still inside the game bag...

It's slowed down but earlier this season I was catching as many as three a day. My hope is the reason I don't catch so many any more is that I've thinned them out that much. Be aware the standard hole is large enough to admit an adult PUMA. I know this for fact because last month I caught an ASY mal...

The story about PUMAs eating hundreds of mosquitoes a day is a myth. Martins typically fly -- and feed -- up relatively high, and skeeters only ever fly close to the ground. Plus a skeeter has too little "meat on its bones" to be a martin's food of choice. They'd rather eat something fleshier, more ...

Is anyone seeing nest building yet?

I've got two pairs hanging around a lot (only had one pair the last two seasons) but they're not building nests yet.

Then again, they showed up about a week earlier last year than this, and I didn't see any signs of nest-building then until May 3rd.

http://s1.bild.me/bilder/150113/8780735puma_tails.jpg I turned this upside-down from the original because it's easier for my brain to recognize the upside-down words than to correlate the upside-down picture to a right side up bird. I'm hardly an authority but to my eye the bird in the picture most...

I can't find anything in the city ordinances (located here ) regulating airguns, however, ... CODE OF ORDINANCES City of HOUSTON, TEXAS Sec. 6-16. - Shooting or catching wild birds. It shall be unlawful for any person to shoot or attempt to shoot or kill with any air rifle, bow and arrow, slingshot ...

It's a tight squeeze but it fits in my Heath house. I operate mine a bit differenfly from Ms. Chambers. I caught an ASY male in mine earlier this season. Because I only have one pair of Martins in residence, I can't stand the thought of the trap frightening them off. So when I caught the one PUMA, I...

JR4-AL, a compensator is not the same as a suppressor or silencer. In a nutshell, a silencer is any device that lessens the noise emitted when you shoot a firearm. This is an exact copy of the definition from the ATF's regulations: 18 U.S.C., § 921(A)(24) "The term “Firearm Silencer” or “Firearm Muf...