Purple Martin Forum

Great write up Steve. A couple of questions. First, how is it that you have martins from January through early August? Second, do you have any problems with owl predation? Finally, you mentioned round holes. You never decided to do SREHs?

Hello Folks! Here's a belated and abbreviated report on the results of my inaugural year as a landlord. At the Algonkian Golf Course, I just took down that dilapidated Heath Castle that was so popular and counted 14 nests. Only one of the four Trios had martins and early in the season I counted 6 ne...

My mentor, Nanette Mickle has a misting system set-up which she credits with having saved her babies a couple years back. She is sometimes on the PMCA Facebook page. You may want to try and private message her there or post on the page and reference her name. She should get an alert if you do so and...

I'm in Northern VA too and I found 3 dead nestlings on the porch and one on the ground. I also found 2 or 3 eggs on the porch. I was assuming it was an aggressive SY male yanking the babies out but now I wonder based on some speculation about starvation. I would have experienced the same weather str...

Sorry Mark. I lost a nest of 6 babies to SYs. Your situation sounds particularly disheartening.

Oh! I'm so worried what I will find tomorrow! Hopefully I'm wrong and none have hatched yet.

Good for you John! I'm hoping you have super duper predator guards in place this year.

John, do you have an update? I'm doing a nest check tomorrow after 3 and a half days of near constant rain and cool temps. Fear what I might find. Last nest check 9 days ago only had eggs but expect there are some nestlings now.

Snake netting and DIY owl/hawk guards installed today. Question: Do you remove the netting when you do nest checks or just push it down or what? Also, found one more house at Brambleton. They told me there were three but there are four. I was informed by the course manager that the houses have not b...

I installed netting today. Not sure how good of a job I did but it will have to suffice until the other volunteer gets out there with the baffle. I like the electric idea but it sounds pretty involved. Is there an article somewhere on details?

Bill - I am very interested learning more about your efforts and experience "pushing" martins to other sites. Is there an article on this approach anywhere? We don't have a lot of martins in Northern VA. I just started managing two public sites and it has me thinking about this.

Good question. I checked a house at an unmonitored site for the first time this week and found an egg on the porch of a Trio house. There were two nests in the house but not near the egg. I just left it there. Wasn't sure what to do. Sounds like next time I should just find a nest to put it in?

Bill, I'm a newbie and I just took on two public sites on golf courses. I'm interested in your experience with public sites. How did you end up with so many? Are there others working with you?

Bill, I'm a newbie and I just took on two public sites on golf courses. I'm interested in your experience with public sites. How did you end up with so many? Are there others working with you?

So Steve, if the netting is placed above the wench or in my case where the rope on the pulley system is wrapped when the house is up, then when you lower the house, do you just squish the netting? I'm not sure the house would be low enough for nest checks with the netting above it unless it can eith...

Thanks Steve. You are not concerned about martins getting caught in the netting? I saw a post somewhere where a landlord found a dead martin in the netting after a really bad storm. Do you use the netting and the baffle? Do you have a photo to show me? I see some people just wrap it around the pole ...

Wow! I love the idea of stacking those houses. A project for the off season!

Does anyone have a photo and more details instructions for contructing the snake guard Steve writes about in this article found in the Archives?

http://www.purplemartin.org/forumarchiv ... kepred.htm

Finished the initial efforts at Algonkian: The one Heath castle with nesting martins is even more difficult than I anticipated because for some reason someone extended the pole so it's actually even higher than the other two and of course cannot be lowered. I did bring my big step ladder and can sti...

Come to think of it, One of the 6 must be vacant or at least with no native nest. We'll take any of those down. Probably best to have one available for fitting during fabrication of the subfloors. Thanks though for the specs and additional detail and for photo!