Purple Martin Forum

Good news, three here first thing this morning, singing and checking out the housing. New arrivals I suppose. Hopefully more are showing up at other sites across the area.

Two residents here before the freeze, nothing now and none flying. I visited two nearby parks today where Martins typically hang out and none there either. However there are several area reports on eBird after Feb 20 so this is promising. Houston west side.

Two Martins here thru 2/15. I attempted to feed them scrambled eggs by flipping and placing some inside the cavity entrance & they ignored it. Two males were huddled together in the same compartment at night to keep warm so I put hand warmers under the nest for them at night and that worked out okay...

KHOU was there last night to film the birds. Here's the short news clip that was aired:
https://www.khou.com/video/life/animals ... Kt5bvjjBN8

Do a web search for "auto panel retainers". No guarantees on where they are made. These screw/rivet type retainers work better in my opinion for quickly swapping out a porch with a trap: https://store.skmfg.com/House-Gourd-Snap-_Screws/productinfo/PMDHS/ I found some of those locally at Lowes or Hom...

lynnh, there's a roost ring in the vicinity of Fremont. I think this is one that Tim tried to track down a couple of years ago. It was still there this morning but it's getting late in the season & I would not expect it to be there much longer. Also the roost is far from the radar station making it ...

Setting up a map/database like this in Google Maps is not a big deal. I received a request to set one up for roosts for the current season, so I did. I've populated it with some of the roosts I've been following in various forums. Still some missing points to add but it's a start. If you have one yo...

Roost data base has not been updated in years. Austin roost is still showing Highland Mall as the location but it has moved four times since then. Checked a few other well known roosts and those are not up to date either. I've submitted nine reports for the Houston area over the past three seasons a...

btw, there is a roost ring at Wichita but it's difficult to pick up because it's very close to the radar station.
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/rad/ ... %2C-97.345

Found this eBird post from 3 weeks ago. https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S47307796

There's an update regarding the Tulsa roost on the Tulsa Audubon website. http://www.tulsaaudubon.org/

Open up the Plymouth radar site at http://vortex.plymouth.edu/myo/rad/nids.html
Fill in all of the blanks including the lat/long location as I did in the attachment. This should get you started.
After dawn on the 12th you can change the date to 12.

Did I read the time lapse stamp incorrectly? The roost didn't disperse until 10 am? I've been checking the radar 4 – 5 am as I thought they normally dispersed shortly before sunrise. You are correct, the roost disperses around sunrise. That radar web sites reports Z time (GMT). You have to subtract...

There's an expanding blob of activity on the river NNW of the radar station. Hope this helps.
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/rad/ ... %2C-88.846

wmfamily, nice catch.

Follow up on the incident with the starling. This occurred last night right before dark. There was a commotion going on in one of the compartments typical of a couple of males fighting or an SY male getting into an occupied compartment. So I banged on the pole to try to break up the fight then I saw...

European Starling

Looks good to me. If trapping becomes necessary the compartment size should allow for inserting something like a universal trap and it looks like there's plenty of room for this. Will you be building this house?

I haven't caught one climbing my pole but I know they are here.

Okay I couldn't tell from the previous photos that the doors swing open downward. This looks okay but I don't like the magnets. A heavy bird like a hawk or owl might be able to pop open the door by just landing on the porch. Or if a raccoon climbs the pole and grabs the porch...