Purple Martin Forum

I got 3 hanging out on gourds for the last 3-4 days. Glad they are working their way back!

So I went to San Diego for a couple days so my fingers were crossed they would still be staying the night when I returned. Good news is I've seen two pairs each go into the same two gourds as the sun was going down the last few nights, and I've seen them sitting on the porches in the morning. They f...

First year for me on starting a colony in Southern Indiana. I have 12 of the Troyer Horizontals with 2 decoys and dawnsong. I started having overnight visitors so I quit playing the dawnsong after I saw they stayed overnight 2-3 days in a row and we had really bad storms here.I went on a trip for wo...

Follow-up to earlier posts about my first year trying to start a colony... With the bad weather the last couple days, I didn't see many PMs before or after work. Today the weather cleared up and I saw a couple a few times throughout the day. I decided to sit out on the deck the 30-40 minutes before ...

I'm in southern Indiana, but I've been seeing visitors everyday in my first year trying to establish a colony. I have two decoys up, play the song most days, and have housing located in a very open area about 10'-11' off the ground. I usually see them later in the afternoon or evening.

So I'm no expert but I have seen this posted. I believe this applies to people trying to start a colony versus an established colony. However I think it has some information that applies. https://www.purplemartin.org/uploads/media/treeswallowemergency-377.pdf Someone else will post with a better ans...

Great looking houses!

So in another post I had some pictures of my visitors to my housing. While I haven't been home much over the past 2-3 days, I have seen visitors every day for the last 4-5 days. I added a CD player to play the dawnsong on a timer then switch it over to the chatter later in the morning. When I've see...

I have the one on the PMCA Repeating Bait Trap. I haven't even seen many HOSPs in my yard until the last 2-3 days. I moved my trap to that area and threw out some bird seed. We'll see if I can catch a couple of those tomorrow.

So I had multiple visitors today. The first picture is when just one was landed with his head in the entrance, the rest were gliding overhead at the time. The second is a different male sitting on the other end gourd. I zoomed in as far as I could, but I didn't want to scare them off by approaching ...

I baited it with bread. I've still only got one HOSP. However the S&S controller house has caught two more Eastern Starlings. It seems to be working really well.

So I made a post a month or so ago about getting all setup for my first year trying to establish a colony. I've been checking on PMs houses in my surrounding area without seeing any until yesterday. As I was leaving my house, I saw closest neighbor (~500' away) had a PM male sitting on one of his go...

Well I hope I am able to get them this year, but if not I will keep trying. I am setting up housing at my parents house about 4 miles away so maybe one of us will get lucky. I have two houses in my garage I built and never used. I will add one closer to the housing 30-35' away. I went to check the o...

Thanks for the replies. There are a lot of PMs in my area. On the other side of Daviess County (Indiana) there is a large Amish population which is probably 18-20 miles from me. It seems nearly every house in that area has PM housing up. In my area, it's not quite that common but I'd say 6-7 houses ...

Housing is coming together nicely!

First year attempting to get a purple martin colony established at my property in Southern Indiana. I have multiple neighbors in the area (live out in the country so I mean within a mile of my house) with housing that you can find at TSC (8-12 room house types). I had groups of them over the summer ...

I'm in southern Indiana so I still got a while, but it's my first year so I'm excited for them to start coming north.

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