Houston Tx Martins ?

[Retpsub]

Ours usually arrive around Feb 14th for several years. Haven't seen any yet. Have driven around to other locations and looked at other houses and haven't seen any there either. Are others in my area having the same problem too ? Thanks. *BW*

[GeneP]

First report in Houston was Feb. 8.

[apundt-TX]

My father-in-law's place usually get them around Feb 26 and none have showed up yet.

[Stephen Cruse]

I am south of Houston and have a couple back but I usually have at least a dozen by now. Migration is slow this year for me. Should pick up any day.

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

I live SW of Houston (Richmond area), and they came in about 10 days late, now have about 25. My son lives near Cypress and his have not yet returned. Our first one was Jan 29th. Some good landlords have reported that they have not seen any yet. I think the weather is different this year

[Matt F.]

Same here.
Both my personal colony, and the school colony, don't have any arrivals yet.
Both sites average arrivals have been around Feb 20th in recent years, so we're still within a "normal" arrival window.
I'm confident all of our greater Houston area Martins are in route.
They were probably just late to checkout of their Brazilian resort!

[apundt-TX]

I hope mine spend some time in Tampico, Mexico this week. Not a good forcast until next weekend.

[rrmartins]

I'm with TX, we lost at least one today, that we know of, cause of weather.

Ours did seem to trickle in a little slower, even though the first one showed up the same day as last year. Good luck.

[James Rieman]

I live in Houston and I don't have any Martins yet either. They have returned to my colony around February 18th in the past. I firmly believe the problem with late Martin returns this season is due to the four year old birds, which should be returning now, have a very low population. 2011 was a terrible year for Martin production in this area due to the extreme drought. Add to that 40 to 50% annual mortality for adult song birds and there just aren't that many Martins of this age group to return at this time. 2012 was a much better year and three year old Martin numbers should be good and these birds should be returning anytime now I think. So I expect large numbers to suddenly appear soon. My understanding of songbird migration is that it is determined by photoperiod (daylength), not weather. Once they start spring migration they move back to their breeding grounds as fast as they can. While poor weather conditions in the region they are migrating through may stall them or slow them down a bit, they have no way of knowing what the weather will be like very much ahead of them, and sometimes migrate into areas of very poor weather to their peril. They don't go back once they move north. This results in the sad situation that many Martin landlords who have starving birds and terrible weather this year are experiencing. Fortunately, younger Martins, which migrate later, make up the bulk of the Martin population and are largely unaffected by this early poor weather. Hopefully we will all be enjoying better weather and more Martin returnees very soon! Hang in there, they will be back!

[Ed Pace]

Hi James, what you say makes a lot of sense to me,. The only thing I'm wondering about was how were the hatchlings and the birds being produced in 2010 in the Houston area and how did it effect last Springs ASY' bird return? Thank's Jim.

Sorry Jim, just noticed your bird report and see that you didn't have any birds in 2010 ,


Ed.

[James Rieman]

Ed, the past two springs my birds returned Feb 18-19. I understand 2009 and 2010 were more productive years than 2011 (that was an awful year for me three pair and all but 1 nestling starved due to the drought) and there were probably higher 4 year-old bird numbers in 2013 and 2014 because of it, so mid to late February Martin arrivals were good. Interestingly I had good numbers of birds return early those years but then had a lull in new arrivals until the SY birds arrived. That may have been because there were not many 2011 birds as two and three year-olds in those years. Or maybe new birds were kept away by porch domination. No way of really knowing. If my theory about the 2011 birds is correct next year we should have lower numbers of Martins in the very early season when what remains of the 2011 Martins return as 5 year-olds. I'm hoping John and/or Louise weigh in on this. They know more about what the research says about Martin migration and how tightly tiered it is and what times the different aged birds return.

[John Barrow]

Dr. Rieman,
Getting to your inquiry I would make several observations. First, I think it is certainly valid to assume that low production numbers in 2011 will limit the overall number of arrivals of 4 year old birds.
Secondly, I would add that current geolocator studies are not going to yield much certainty as to timing of an age class returning. Although some pre-banded birds were outfitted with geolocators up until 2009--Bridget's first three deployments and my first--geolocator protocol generally changed beginning in 2010 whereby birds that had not previously been banded were targeted for geolocators and banded on date of deployment. That is because authorizations were obtained to paint the federal band (normally with a bright florescent color) to assist in locating targeted birds returning the following year.
Generally targeted birds were identified as ASY or SY, with no effort to age them beyond that. It would be impractical to paint bands already attached to a martin, and the banding lab will not permit banders to remove an existing federal band and install a second numbered band that is pre-primed and painted. There is already one status change by adding the geolocator and BBL frowns on status changes.
There are a few geolocator returns of martins that have carried a unit for two or more years, and those maps might shed some light on return schedules of those individual martins as they age. I have not yet looked at any of that data in preparing this response.
In addressing your questions more directly, I looked at returns for birds (all ASY) I deployed in 2009. Of ten tagged birds relocated in 2010, all but two were banded at time of deployment. One of those two (TX031T) returned as a 4yoa and her geolocator was recovered on April 10, 2010. Unfortunately, the battery on her unit had failed and we got no usable data. That female was recaptured by Jeff Webster and myself at his colony, and I do not know when she arrived there. A second martin, a male banded prior to deployment (TX805J), returned as a 4yoa to my colony, but had lost it's geolocator. It was first identified on Mar 20, and likely arrived shortly before then, but without data there is no conclusive way to know that. My projects in 2010 and 2013 involved deploying geolocators entirely on non-banded birds and adding a painted federal band at that time.
The third point I would emphasize is that 2010 was much like this year. In 2010 inward migration was stalled by cold and wet weather--a series of frontal systems that had some impact in the Yucatan. We recovered our first geolocator on Feb 12, 2010, and did not recover another until March 23, and some not until early April. Bearing in mind that we targeted only strong ASY martins to tag with geolocators in 2009, it is certain that all recoveries were from martins 3yoa and probably that some of these were 4 yoa or older. While we feared many of the tagged birds were lost to the bad Feb. weather, we did ultimately account for 12 of the 20 martins tagged with geolocators, making it doubtful if any were lost to early weather encounters.
The point from this that I would like to emphasize is that while there are good indications the earliest returning martins are predominately of older classes (4yoa and older); 1) there are probably a small number of 3yoa martins included, given the non-absolutes of a wild creature, and 2) not all numbers of the older age classes (4yoa and older) are included in the first waves of migration. The earliest (older) birds will first embark from Brazil on migration to Northern states beginning around Mar 1, and older birds will continue to migrate into Southern tier states, including Gulf states, at least as late as April, having left Brazil as late as March.

[Mark Peters]

Just had my first pair drop by Wednesday. Last two years they wer showing up about mid feb.

[James Rieman]

Wow John, thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response to my questions. I love hearing about the geolocator research! That work has yielded so much great information and I greatly appreciate everything you and the PMCA put into this. Great reasons to support the PMCA. This is an exciting year as it is a more unusual pattern of migration and it will be interesting to see how pattern develops as the season progresses. Hopefully you will recover many geolocators on the birds that are out there now and it will shed further light on this year's migration. As always it is great to hear from you, what a wonderful resource we have in this forum!