Purple Martin Forum

possibly a short eared owl? In any case, wind chimes will only work when there is a breeze enough to make them loud enough to distract the owl. But he already knows the martins are there. This would be about the time young owls are getting out and hunting on their own as well. Whatever you have coul...

In my nest that had three young chicks (only about a week old, compared to the other four which are fully feathered and looking ready to fledge soon) there are now only two. There is also not a lot of nesting material. The chicks were both lying on their backs quivering. One of them has some worn sp...

Ok I got current pictures of my martin babies. 20 I guess is the total. Lower east facing nest (4 babies) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79692843/images/martins2016/babycount7-10/lowereastnest.jpg Lower west facing nest (3 babies) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79692843/images/martins2016/...

terriergal, They do indeed make cameras for smart phones that are on the end of a flexible cable. Most have small LED lights on the camera end for looking into dark places. I have wooden martin houses that are not easily accessible for nest checks, so I needed a similar camera to do my nest checks....

i put one dose in a few weeks ago. We've had some mighty rain so i will have to do it again. Probably should just do it today and change out some nests too. And get a good count on the babies. Last count was 20 (1-3 eggs yet) babies and I think 5 pairs. I had 3 pair last year. One of the pairs this ...

This isn't really martin related but since we all talk about wrens, HOSPS and other cavity nesters... I have a question about a behavior i saw last night while walking my dogs. Two or three times last night along the dirt road there were house wrens rolling in the dirt. At first I thought it was dus...

Current chick count is 8 (maybe 9?), with I think one about to emerge. One egg reject that I tossed, it was all dried up. 10 eggs yet to hatch.. It looks like one of the roof compartments has a house sparrow stuffing it full. Another roof compartment of the SK Barn has martin nesting materials in it...

Well I am just sick :cry: A few days ago #2 nest had 4 eggs. Then it had 3 eggs? I would have thought I misremembered but I had taken a pic of the 4 eggs. I never found the missing egg, looked everywhere. Today it had 1 egg. Everything was in disarray 1 egg broken in the entrance box & 1 egg in the...

Ive been trying to catch h.s. in barn. I tried glue traps , minnow type trap and b.b. nest trap insert. No luck.Ive been doing nest clean outs instead . Im building a blaine trap.I think I might wait till the young are born then put them in the blaine trap maybe the parents will go in the trap.Catc...

Glad you caught him. Yep they are terrible little monsters. I hate having 'misses' because every time they escape a trap they get that much more skittish and smarter. When I have had hesitant birds I have sometimes wedged the elevator with a dowel passed through the wire underneath it and sticking o...

wonderful!! Congratulations to the happy couple. And their landlord. :-)

We had a nifty setup where our audio receiver would come on at 430-5 am and we just had the audio feeding into it all the time so that when the receiver turned on it would automatically be sending the signal out to the house. Got lazy this year and have only been turning it on manually at about 7 am...

On my fourth year of trying I have at least 7 pair staying the night. it may be more they are getting hard to count. They must have been displaced because at least five males are ASY and 3 to 4 females are ASY. After 3 years of lookers I have been reluctant to say anything til now since I was tryin...

Hello all, I need opinions on the best pellet to use in my air rifle. I am shooting sparrows at about 35 yards, so I mainly need accuracy, not firepower. I have an RWS 34 Diana .177 rifle, with a Hawke Vantage 3-9 x 40 AO Mil Dot IR scope. Opinions on what is the best pellet for this set up for spa...

The Black Death Has Arrived I know folks have had success with using vanilla extract. We would probably need gallons of the stuff for our large colonies. There is also some fly control absorbine products that can work. I will be checking into these. " What about those bird protector discs that some...

Three yesterday, 7 today so far. Will be nice to get ahead and have very few around for the first martins' arrival. I use an S&K barn and I think I might have to replace it this year, modifying it the same way this one is (16 compartments down to ten) because some of the tabs that keep the access pa...

I haven't seen too many HOSP's around but I try to keep up with that all year round. I did collect some pine straw from around my trees this year for nest changes next year.

I know it's been a while since they've been gone. I finally took down and cleaned the house a few weeks ago and they all seem to have successfully fledged. I think last count was three pairs and 16 chicks! I never found any dead around the property or in the house, so it seems they had all survived....

and i just discovered the same problem on my martin house. LOADS and loads of mites. UGH. Gross things. But in checking all the nests I discovered there are 16 partially feathered fat chicks not 13 as I had seen earlier.

Totally infested with red mites. Literally were crawling all over the outside of the house too. I had to treat the entire martin house, and the babies, for fear of losing them and/or the parents abandoning the site. I will check them again tonight and try to wipe out any Sevin residue and make sure ...