Building My Site in Central Fl. (Before and after pictures)

[jim h]

2010 MARTIN COLONY

On February 11 when 3 ASY males showed up at my site I thought they were just passing thru. I was glad to see them, but being that this was not an established site I posted to the forum that they were on their way north. From that day on there was always one male and sometime 3 that stayed overnight.

Sometime in late February one of the ASY males brought home an ASY female, and as they say the rest is history. By late March we had 3 ASY pairs. The first pair started a nest in 2 gourds and on April 6 I found the first egg in one of the gourds. The other 2 pair had their nest built and the first egg laid on April 16 & 18 .

By early May, 3 SY pair had showed up and laid their first egg on May 1, 3 and 7. While the 3 S Y pairs were getting ready to nest another ASY pair showed up and by May 12 had their first egg. During a nest check on June 6, much to my surprise, I found yet another nest with 4 eggs in it.

I have been trying to attract martins to my site since 2008 without success, till this year. The first year I put up a 12 unit plastic house that was attached to a 20’ aluminum pole. I placed it in an open area back of my sister-in- law’s house. I had a few lookers but no takers. After the first season I started looking around on the web and found the PMCA.

When the 2009 season started I joined the PMCA and started posting some questions. I got some great suggestion and input for my site. I changed the 12 room house into a 6 unit and put it on a telescoping pole. It was also suggested that I might want to add some gourds under the house. Sometime in mid to late March I moved house to a location near some power lines on the north side of my property. I thought this might be a better location because of the power lines and 2 large strawberry fields. There was a large sycamore and 2 smaller trees that blocked the flight path of new site, but I knew if I needed to I could take these out.

I was contacted by a local member of the PMCA who offered to take a look at my site. He came by and looked at new site; he thought the new site was much better. He invited my wife and me to his place to look at his colony,” we took him up on the offer”. He has a very impressive site. He also turns out in excess of a hundred fledglings each year. One of the things that I liked about his site was a power horn he had attached to the top of one of his racks. He explained that he played music thru the horn at night to confuse any owls that might be in the area. He said that he had not had an owl attack since he installed the horn, but was wiped out many years ago by owls prior to installing the horn.

After the visit with “our new mentor “I got busy and installed a power horn, amplifier and a cd-radio. I also ordered a cd of the dawn song from the PMCA. I started playing the cd every day. I had one sub-adult pair that would come and hang out every day. They did this for 3 -4 weeks but just could not get the courage to stay overnight. I had other martins check out the site, but it seemed the trees were an issue, also I think I had the rack a little too close to a farm service road.

During the fall of 2009 I had the trees removed and this really opened the site up. I decided that I would leave the house where it was and ordered a new rack. I ordered the Gemini 2 rack with a brake winch. I thought the round rack might work well with the new flight paths that were created when the trees were taken out. With the trees cleared I needed to place the rack about 40 feet from the house by the road and the new rack about 40 feet from the corner of my home “better viewing”. I order a good assortment of gourds; all new gourds had round holes. By late January of 2010 I had the rack up with 24 gourds attached. I put up a new power horn on the new rack as it was easier than taking the old one off of the house rack. I also ordered several decoys.

I started playing the dawn song 24/7 on a low volume in late January with both horns working. We went to Tallahassee on February 9th and returned on the 11th, we were greeted by the 3 ASY males mention above.

The round rack is a 2 tier system on a 16’ 3” square aluminum pole; the tiers are 24” apart. I had always thought if given a choice martins would choose the highest tier, not true. The first pair took over 2 gourds on the top tier, 2 sy pair claimed gourds on top tier, and 5 pair chose the lower tier. I did not open the house on the telescoping pole all season because it is a real pain to raise and lower, however I did let a pair of Great Crested Flycatchers nest in a gourd under the house.

The predator guard at bottom of pole is 6"x36" piece of pvc. I saw a 24" round disk at HD that is used to catch water from a hot water heater overflow that I may add to rack this fall.This should stop all snakes and any animals that attempt to climb pole.

The 8 pair of martins laid 41 eggs, hatched 39 young, with all 39 fledging. The pair that showed up last hatched 4 of 5 eggs and fledged on July 18 and 19.

Note: I did play music thru the speakers every night form the time the first young were hatched till the last ones fledged on July 19.

I am going to attach a picture of my current site before and after the trees were taken out if I can get the pictures sized right.

I want to say thanks to all those PMCA members who post to the web site, as it is a great teaching tool to new members like me and a special thanks to our mentor Steve R here in Plant City.

[bwenger]

Jim,

Congratulations on becoming a landlord. You had a real good start for your first year.

Nice looking site as well.

Good luck in 2011 as well.

Bill

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Excellent start, so now you should be able to attract a bunch next year. Removing the trees and disrupting the owls are the two most important things that a person can do to help attract martins. You surely did follow the good suggestions... Congrats

[flyin-lowe]

I love the looks of those gourd racks and your site looks great. What kind of predator guards are those, and how big around are they?. From the pic they don't look big enough to stop a snake from climbing up but pics can be deceiving.

[~Ray~Gingerich]

Since your pvc pipe is only 36" it might be a good idea to add snake netting at the top, another option would be to add an electric wire spiral around the pvc pipe.
Your site looks good with the trees removed.

[jim h]

Hey Guys, thanks for your comments and suggestions. I will be making some changes to predator guard this fall. Once again, I just love the forum, what a knowledge base!! I would like to see a better way to add photos to a post.