Purple Martin Forum

Thank you for your respond to questions I value your experience. I am a new landlord and have 2 gourds. The parents are subadults. One Gourd has 6 nestlings and one egg. The issue is one of the nestlings is a runt, much smaller than the others. Can I feed it? I called the wildlife refuge in RI and t...

I am a new landlord in Naples Fl. I have a predator quart in place.
We have a lot of snakes so I bought bird netting.
I have no idea how to put it up.
I saw a picture saying it should be fluffed up and close to the square pole but how the heck do you get it to stay up

Snakes and hawks Thank you for the posting about snake netting. I will be setting up the colony on Church grounds. I am a new landlord in Naples Florida. The colony will be set up about 50 ft from very tall pines and garden club church members have reported a good populations of snakes so I have pur...

Hello have been trying for four years to establish a colony. Tree swallows are driving me crazy. I have a small yard and my empty colony is located on my boat dock, about 40 ft from our house. Last year I had three sub adult males who came every day and were attracted to the colony and my recording ...

My gosh, you have a great set up; it screams location! bear down on those sparrows, start with the males, shoot and trap...the TTS wont be successful all the time; sounds like you gave them alternatives...someone here let the TTS nest in a gourd then moved it and they were fine. There's hope! My po...

Wannabe PM landlords abound . . . with many of us hanging out on the PMCA Forum - for good reason. The advice here runs the gamut from technical to practical, virtually all of it outstanding, especially from the long-time landlords, the pros. Admire you for continuing your efforts. Get those Tree S...

TS couple on make shift rig 30 ft from unestablished PM colony

My advice is read everything the pro's here say and it is a LOT. Im a wanna be and learning all the time. did the gourds get cleaned out from last year? Just thinking. Is there a bit of pine straw and leaves in there? put a bit of mud near the entrance and make it look used. Look at the placement, ...

BillieJR wrote:Welcome, LoisG. I've had martins and then not had martins - I'm still learning and learning a lot from everyone here. Good luck - I hope you have a successful season.

Thank you for responding to me- I am getting discouraged but will never give up.

Well since I last posted it is even worse than not having any purple martins. The pair of birds that I first saw were not PMS but tree swallows. They are very aggressive and even drove off a beautiful adult male purple Martin looking around.I also have a HUGE sparrow problems. Since Friday here is w...

My husband put up the 12 gourds we bought last year. We bought up the gourds in June. , 2016. We left it us throughout the summer. We had a little interest, especially in the morning. But no nesting. Yesterday morning, a couple inspected the nest spent some time and left. It is 630am and not back ye...