Southern Indiana (Hopefuly First Time Landlord) & update from earlier post

Bkhollan · Sun Apr 07, 2019 8:58 am

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 gourds. I've been checking my housing but no activity from PMs that I've seen and surprisingly no HOSP activity either.

1) In my earlier post, I was told to move one of my BB nestboxes within 30'-50' of my PM housing to eliminate the BB/TS interference issue. Well I did that and now have a BB nest in that nestbox along with one of my other BB nestboxes in a different spot on my property.

2) I bought a HOSP Repeating trap and built a Starling S&S controller type trap. I caught 1 female HOSP in the first trap, but my dog apparently was eating the bread I was using as bait so going to try seed starting today. The Starling trap didn't catch anything for two weeks so I was wondering if maybe the weight was off until yesterday. I caught 4 starlings yesterday morning. I checked it when I first woke up, but there was nothing. I checked it again about 3 hours later to find 4 in it. Does putting a couple fake "holes" with black paint help attract them?

3) I'm going to buy an MP3 playing alarm clock today so I can play the dawnsong in the mornings to go along with my decoys to help attract the PMs.

flyin-lowe · Sun Apr 07, 2019 10:46 am

Getting the BB's and TS started nesting early on is a good thing. They will be less likely to move into your martin housing once they start building their own nests. I use SREH entrances and have never set up a trap specifically for starling so I don't know what the best configuration is. Only once in my 10 plus year have I had a starling get into one of my SREH and that was last year and I got a trap for that gourd to get rid of him. My experience with repeating sparrow traps is hit and miss. it might go a month with nothing then I might catch 5-10 in a single day. I have the best luck with an insert trap in my T14. As long as my T14 is up I usually don't have sparrows messing with my gourds, they seem to prefer the wooden house.

jhcox · Sun Apr 07, 2019 9:26 pm

What do you bait the House sparrow trap with I have two different traps and no luck on either one. I have tried bread and bird seeds. JHCox

Bkhollan · Wed Apr 10, 2019 9:52 pm

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.

flyin-lowe · Thu Apr 11, 2019 3:01 pm

I've had luck with popcorn as well. The best bait I ever had was a baby HOSP that was due to nest. I caught it fluttering aroung my yard. I put it in my Blaine trap and caught 11 that afternoon. That is my best day of trapping. Once you get one it leave it in as long as you can it will draw in others. Which repeating trap do you have?

jhcox · Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:15 pm

I have one of the tilting repeater traps. I also have the type that had the entrances on both sides that tappers down as it goes into the trap. JHCox

Bkhollan · Sat Apr 13, 2019 8:40 pm

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.