Purple Martin Forum

My two PM houses in the past 11 years have always been on a 10 inch piling 10 feet from our dock and 10 feet above the water (photo). In past years I've had a few hawk strikes, a snake attack and last week a squirrel was on the house, talk about a leap!!! I had noticed a hawk hanging around the colo...

Ours have not arrived yet (Summerton SC, 40 compartments), they have usually been here by the first week of March. I opened up the house late Feb. and have had woodpecker attacks trying to enlarge the openings, so very frustrating. Have seen a few flying around, so hope they show up soon! One curiou...

We've seen several posts showing success, but in some cases the snakes get tangled & trapped, so you might have to deal with that. I was going to use it but went with an oversized cone instead.

Subsonic .22 LR or .223/556 ammo when paired with a suppressor is about as loud as a finger snap. I have a swappable .22 LR upper for my AR-15, and a registered 10" suppressor, adding a decent scope makes it a true assassin's weapon, not quite silent, but not as loud as a 1200+ fps pellet gun.

This morning it seemed a PM was maybe stuck in an opening or being attacked on a porch, its wings fluttering about as if in distress! So I run out to the colony, with an extension pole to maybe assist. When I get there she's being ridden like a horse by another PM, so I slowly backed away to give th...

Wonderful work!! Good lord, what a house. I think your right, it will last a good long time. Great style and craftsmanship, please send pictures when your friends arrive! I have to ask, how did you get it on the piling? Tom It's a modular concept, each floor and wall section stacks on one by one, t...

Nice looking house. I might have missed it but what are the dimensions of the cavities? Cavities are 14 D x 7 W x 5.25 T, outside walls are 29 x 29, floor/porches are 36 x 36, roof is 42 x 42, stainless mesh trampoline at bottom is 50 x 50 (70” diagonally), and total weight is approx. 275 pounds. I...

The PVC stock is a smidge less than 1/2" (15/32) and there's a router bit that size for the interlocking slots of the partition dividers. The PVC is not very rigid but lighter than plywood, especially treated plywood. If you notice the columns on the outside corners, those keep the floors and c...

I've had large PM colonies since 1996; my 1996 house had 24 compartments, my 2013 house had 32 and my new one has 40. I just finished building & installing it on a mooring piling next to our lake dock but still have the entrance covers on, and have not installed the piling's cone baffle yet (for...

Thanks for the comments. It's possible to make a "cone" baffle of any size and shape using the "ConeCalc" app (I can make the top opening 11", the bottom opening 20" and have the cone be 30" tall, add 1" overlaps AND have it split the pattern into 2+ segments)...

Our 8 yr. old large 32-compartment (each is 6x13) colony sits on a 12" piling 14' over the water, 12' off our dock and 85' from shore. The bottom of the house is 28" x 28" with a surrounding 6" wire mesh extension/trampoline (34" wide predator guard). Last week I found a 4-1...

We have at the least a pair of eastern kingbirds, that pretty much hang around and defend our 32 compartment PM colony as well as our nearby wood duck box. They use the roof-top perch occasionally, but I have not seen them harass our PMs at all. We first noticed them a few years back thinking they w...