Purple Martin Forum

Kathy, I too want to thank you for your excellent blog concerning predator guards. We’ve been hosting martins for sixteen years now but didn’t get off to a good start. We are one of those who lost our first nest of six 12 day old martins and the mama to a rat snake. We thought we were safe as we had...

I’m in Georgetown but I guess I don’t count even though our two cities are next to each other.

Whenever a red tail is nearby I see the martins and other birds dive bombing him. However I would be a little uncomfortable if one was sitting on top of my martin pole. It’s amazing how the martins and other birds recognize a predator bird from one non threatening. We have black bellied whistling du...

John, We spend a lot of time in Boerne so I know how beautiful the hill country is. We always go the back way on 281 then hop onto Hwy 46 instead of taking the freeway for that exact reason. We pass a lot of ranches that have exotic animals. Are your blackbuck antelopes considered exotic? Yes, anyti...

John, I’m in Texas too. We did a nest check two days ago. It was in the late afternoon. The martins had not left all day so we decided they would just have to deal with it :lol: They weren’t happy, kept flying around and as soon as we finished our first pole of Troyer gourds, they immediately went b...

We had a hawk that was coming in at dusk when the last of the birds came in. Both my husband and I went out with air horns trying to watch every possible way he would come in because it was always different. He came over our roof a couple of times but from different areas. He appeared suddenly from ...

Steve and Loco, Thank you to the both of you for your input. We have an air horn but the direction this (these) hawks come from are so hidden by the oak trees we don’t see him/her coming in time to use it. But we’ll take it with us just in case. And Steve you may be right about him grabbing a martin...

A hawk has been threatening our martins, especially when they come in for the evening. We have two poles so my husband and I have started going out about ten minutes before they start coming in. We each stay close to a pole. For the first few evenings we didn’t see a hawk but last night that changed...

I hear ya Spiderman. Been having the same issues here. It really upsets me .

Hi Whippy, The past week has brought an influx of new birds and a lot of fighting going on. I’m not sure yet how many pairs we have although I have seen two enter several gourds in the evening. We checked them today just to see what was going on and it looked like most of the aspen bedding has inden...

Last night a hawk chased one of our martins in at sunset and I think the martin made it inside the Troyer gourd. The rest were already in. The hawk sat on the porch for some time then flew off. Unfortunately the gourd faced away from where I could see the entrance so I’m not totally sure. I went out...

Yeah, we’ve already had at least two attacks that we know of. Probably more we haven’t seen. One of them the martins avoided but the other was a surprise attack when a martin was sitting on the porch of his gourd. It was dusk and all the others had gone inside. He was the only one out. This was a la...

Is there any way you could add gourds to the bottom of your Grandpa house? I’m not familiar with that type of housing. It sounds like you’ve done all the right things! The winch is a great improvement. I don’t know how people deal with a pulley system and agree it makes it difficult to do nest check...

What type of housing do you have? If possible you might want to open a couple of units but only if you are able to check them daily to make sure HS’s don’t move in. It’s possible you might have martins arrive earlier than last year since you had SY’s. Did you do regular nest checks last year? That i...

We didn’t get any our first year and were advised by my then mentor to move our pole closer to the house because they like to be around people. That also meant closer to an oak tree but he assured me it wasn’t a problem. We did get one pair that produced six young ones year 2. But we also lost them ...

We put electric wiring on our poles after my husband got tired of cutting snakes out of the netting. That was about 5-6 years ago and we haven’t had any snakes since. I realized how effective it was when I watched a squirrel run over with the intent of trying to go up the pole. As soon as he touched...

I have noticed titmice stealing nesting material from our gourds. Yet I can’t find where their nest is. Bluebirds often sit on the top of our martin poles but I think they are keeping an eye out. They are very territorial and will chase away any bird that gets near their nest box. We have three BB h...

Last year we had a pair return together very early for us. It was on Feb. 2. They both wanted in a gourd we had not yet opened. They kept flying back and forth and sitting on the porch like they were waiting for it to magically open. We have two poles with gourds. My husband went out to lower the on...

RR, somehow I missed your tragedy with the rat last year. My excuse is I was sick during most of the martin season and not on here much. I hated reading what happened, was shocked really. Seems like there are many things that can happen that we don’t think about. I was happy this morning to read you...

That’s funny because we had the opposite happen. A black bellied whistling duck went into our owl house high up on an oak tree. She laid one egg, got stuck inside and couldn’t get out. My husband had to take the bottom portion of the house off to make room for her to get out. He has never put it bac...