This is frustrating

[Guest]

After a couple of years with moderate success this year was perfect. I have 12 pair with (at last count ) 40 babies and all kinds of action. Well now I've attracted the attention of what I think is a cooper hawk I've seen him take one Martin for sure and I'm certain thats not the first and since he is having some success I guarantee he'll be back. I'm torn between letting nature take its coarse and protecting my efforts.

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Jeff, I think the hawk will be back every day as long as he is successful. Sometimes the martins become more careful and that helps a bit, but the truth is that the hawks are excellent hunters. There have been many cases where the martins will abandon the housing due to the hawks presence. I sure hate to see you have that problem.

[Steve Kroenke]

Jeff,

Cooper?s hawks are deadly enemies of purple martins around their colony site and fledglings that are flying about or sitting on power lines or in tree canopies. This season my neighbor and I have easily lost over 100 martin fledglings to a pair of resident Cooper?s hawks since early June. We had around 250 martin pairs between us and about 1000 fledglings. Our colonies are very open and that reduces the predation on parent martins, but has no impact on the fledglings. I have watched these hawks take fledgling martins all during the day. Once these hawks find a steady and easy food source, such as martins, they come back over and over again, particularly if the hawks have nestlings or fledglings. The best legal defense against these marauders is an open colony site and vigilance on the part of the landlord to try to chase them away. This chasing part is NOT easy and often fails! I have managed to intervene many times and keep the hawks from entering our colonies, but I can?t control what happens in the surrounding area.

At my previous colony site in Tallahassee, Florida, resident Cooper?s hawks decimated my martins during the height of the nesting season from early May through June in 2004, and numerous babies starved to death. It was a disaster.

Hopefully, you can keep the hawk at bay or the parent martins will develop a more vigilant behavior and escape. However, the martin fledglings are ?easy meat? for Accipiter hawks, like Cooper?s and sharp-shinned hawks, and these vulnerable youngsters are no match in flying skills with bird-eating raptors.

Good luck.

Steve

[Laverne]

You can't prevent what happens when the Purple Martins leave your site and head off for the premigratory roost and then Brazil, either.

Aerial predators are going to take "some" Purple Martins. It happens every year in every colony. It happens all the way along the migratory trip and it continues during the time they spend in the Southern Hemisphere.

Hawks are protected from human predators by law in this country. They are protected for a reason.

I have a wonderful colony of Purple Martins. I watch with dismay when a hawk takes one of my PMs. If I see the hawk first he gets the running, screaming, clapping hands routine (with my dog, Rusty, running and barking at some invisible bad guy). I have seen a lot of fly-bys and fly-aways with martins in hot pursuit. I have seen a few taken. This season, I did not witness a single successful attack on my colony. In-other-words, I did not see the hawk fly away with a Purple Martin in his talons. I did see what I am sure was a successful attack. I saw the PMs dive bombing a tree over and over for 15 minutes. The hawk was there eating his prey. The hawk fails more often than he succeeds. The hawk is ever present in the life of a Purple Martin. The Purple Martin must learn how to evade the hawk, if he is going to survive. Since so many PMs do survive for several seasons, some of them must be pretty good at evasion. If you kill every hawk that ever threatens your colony - you are messing with the balance of nature. The hawk serves the same purpose to the PM colony as the wolf does to the elk herd. The old, sick, injured, and inexperienced are taken first. Survival of the fittest, means the best genes are passed on and the survivors set an example to the rest of the birds. In essence, they teach them "how" to survive.

Inexperienced is a key word here. If you protect your PM colony from every hawk that threatens them - who is going to protect them when they leave your colony?

[robndebby]

I know it's part of nature for hawks to kill small birds, but like everyone else, we hate to see it and my philosophy is: Sure they can catch and eat birds, I just don't want them doing it in my yard to my birds! My husband made me what I call a clapper. He hinged 2 pieces of wood together and whenever I see a hawk (the Martins are good at letting me know one is around), I run out and clap it away. We have a bird rehabilitator here in our county and during discussions with her, she has suggested hitting him with scatter pellets (?) and he won't come back anytime soon. She said it won't kill or hurt him, just make him leery from coming back to the same area. So far we have not done that, nor do I think we will since the Martins are usually flying around him at the time and we certainly don't want to hit one of them. Plus, even though I don't like hawks around, it is part of nature. Fortunately I am home most of the time and usually get rid of the hawk and have seen no signs of predation this year from them. Last year we had a young hawk catch one and as we tried chasing and clapping, the hawk went to the ground with the Martin, but was too small to get back up with it in his claws, so he just let it loose and took off. Unfortunately he had already killed it.

Good luck to you, I know how sad it is when it happens.