Purple Martin Forum

I just put mine on rack above housing and wind blows toward north. I use pine straw and I've never had troubles with nests being soaked, might be luck rather than skill. I do wait to turn on till close to max temp and turn off early. If you accidently let run all night might get into trouble. I live...

Previously, In 23 years with same location, I had never had trouble when temperture was less than 103. I have said at 103 every baby that can get to a door will jump. Someone on this forum had said it was a heat Index of X- don't remember his number, but claimed that was the number to worry about ju...

end of last year my last 3-4 nests were ravaged by hawks Start of this year more hawks I got so depressed about it I basically ignored my birds. Had earliest arrival ever! 2/17 and put out pine straw. Then I completely ignored them until 5/22 and did nest checks and found a lot of eggs. Ignored them...

I agree with Doug, I've had them peck one of my last two babies to death. My wife doesn't like me killing them"they are Gods creatures too" but I call them "gang bangers" trying to invade my neighborhood and I'm not going to let them. It is a big problem for me because I'm suburban. I've trapped, bu...

My martins are long gone but amazingly my chimney swifts are still buzzing around. Today I also saw a barn swallow hunting a field. A good substitute for this time of year.

I made fun of my wife for talking about scarecrows cause I had a hawk hit a decoy on the opposite side of a lowered rack I was working on, a round gemini rack, so I will have to tell her it's a possiblity. I can see one sitting on top of the rack with his legs crossed and corncob pipe. Or maybe a fa...

Had a great year till I was down to the last 6-8 nests then the Hawks started blitzKrieging my racks. Saw two carried away in 30 minute period. Had a wave 6-8 nests that fledged same day and I assumed they were getting the slower fresh fledglings. They just keep coming all day every day. I finally r...

I was post a 24 hour call and doing some routine nest changes. Had a squawking 20 day old and stuffed a paper towel in entrance til he settled down and FORGOT to remove it. HAd to work dark am to dark pm next day and when I got home my wife said "a white rag was hanging out of one of the gourds". I ...

I have 72 gourds on 3 racks and a lot of fledging going on. I check them regularly. Yesterday my wife found baby on ground~22ish days old. I worked from dark to dark so she parked him at rehab until I got home early today. When I was checking nests about 2pm to see where he came from I found about 1...

Thanks Mark. I was out of town a week on vacation with grandkids. A surprising amount of nests are missing a bird or two. I don't think I've ever had snake predation but I've owned some snakes(boa and python) and i don't believe a snake would crawl up a pole and eat two baby week old birds and crawl...

I was thinking same as you Mark. I'm off work today. Now a 26 day old sitting on Gourd porch in a rack I need to change several nests. Afraid to lower and have him fly someplace I can't get to. I've bought a lot of Bo 11s because they seem to have a good cooling mechanism. I've also bought the Troye...

I've never seen a shade for these huge gemini racks I have.
When it gets to about 101-102 I use misters and have had great success. Even got a pair of babies through August and 109 temp.
My experience is that at 103 they start jumping

I have one with 8, crazy.

I've lowered mine for the entire month of may in OK because storms are so unpredictable. I also lower when I'm going out of town. They do not mind at all. The spinning and rotation is a bigger problem so you are correct to stop that.

I put mine up a few years ago and this year first time I actually saw a bird eating them. Research shows better production so I'm excited to improve conditions any way I can.

I'm in a heat wave of upper 90's with Heat Index 103-105. Definitely stressing the babies. My question is about nest changes. My experience is that they just quit eating/feeding when it closes in on 100 degrees. I need to do some nest changes but don't want to interrupt morning feeding when temp is ...

Someone sent me a message with questions about my 72 gourds but reply email was invalid

I usually put in pine straw and this year an entire set of 24 gourds removed the pine straw. They have always used it in the past. There must have been some kind of contamination. They pulled all the pine straw out of the gourds. They were using dry bermuda grass and I thought it was sparrow nests a...

I had my first bird on Feb 23rd, first egg on April 24th! No wonder they have a hard time competing with sparrows and starlings. I guess since HSP and starlings are English they are better cold spring weather adapted. What in the world do they wait around on?

I bought my house 20 years ago and it had a single trio on site that "attracted" martins. I now have a total of 72 gourds and a "colony" I think attracting and forming a colony may be different things. I have a lot of hawks and I think the more birds you have the better they can defend themselves. M...