June 4th and June 7th pictures of feeding babies.
May 27th Pictures of 5 babies born at different times in Natural Gourd #1.
May 12th Now the ASY female that previously had 7 eggs has 9 eggs in her nest, so I'm guessing several will not hatch. One SY female had 8 eggs, but grouped into two piles of 3 eggs and 4 eggs, plus one next to the entrance hole that I discarded. It looks like she may be incubating the 3-egg pile (since she was sitting on those when I first opening the door for a nest check), so hopefully she'll at least be successful with a few babies this year. She didn't even build a nest except for adding a few leaves, so I put some sticks/leaves under the eggs today. I use plastic canvas fabric on the floor of the metal compartments, so at least the babies will have something to grip if the nest isn't good enough. Here's an update on my nest data sheet.
May 9th There are at least 3 sets of parents with babies now, based on the frequent trips to the nest to bring food. Here are a few pictures from today, one with a daddy bringing back a damselfly to the babies.
May 8th We had a very unexpected arrival today, 5 baby martins! I must have miscounted the eggs earlier , since I wasn't expecting any babies for a couple more days. They were so tiny and cute, much tinier than the babies I took pictures of last year at 3 days old. I'm guessing these were just born this morning.
April 29th I now have my Nest Data Sheet on-line so you can view it as it is updated. I typically do nest checks every 5 to 7 days. Today there was 1 nest with 7 eggs, 4 with 6 eggs, 1 with 5 eggs, and several more in progress.
April 22nd A few martins are now gathering leaves from the red bud closest to my house, so I got some pretty good pictures of them on the red bud tree. Previously they were using the red bud further from the house. I counted 14-15 pairs of martins with active nests. Four or five of the males are SY (second year) males.
April 14th We installed a nest camera yesterday (bought at X10.com) and here are some pictures from today inside a natural gourd.
April 12th I've been out of town a lot in the past month, but plan to take a lot more pictures in the upcoming weeks. Here are some pictures from today, and I got some of the leaf-gathering in a red bud tree, but haven't downloaded them from my camera yet. I put up 3 more gourds today, because my gourds are pretty much full already and I want to give the subadults somewhere to stay in case they don't want to use the aluminum housing. There are between 20 and 25 martins sleeping here now.
March 17th Today I modified all of my remaining round holes
to excluders and crescents to get rid of the starlings. In the morning
when there were still some round holes, the starlings and martins were
fighting a lot and several battles ended up with a starling and martin
on the ground fighting - YIKES!! Finally tonight I can relax since
the starlings are gone and won't be able to get into the compartments or
gourds any more!! Here's a picture at around 5pm tonight where lots
of martins came to take advantage of the PMCA roosting arms that I hung
my gourds on.
Six of the martins are sleeping here tonight: one pair in the top right
natural gourd with excluder entrance, one pair in an aluminum 6"x12" compartment
with and excluder entrance, 1 single male in an excludered aluminum compartment,
and finally 1 single male in the top left gourd in pic (natural gourd with
2 crescent entrances - this was originally one crescent and one round hole
which I planned to plug, but then decided to convert to another crescent).
March 16th My ASY male from last year is having GREAT SUCCESS at attracting other martins to my site. I think about 6-7 birds went to sleep here, but couldn't tell for sure since so many were flying in and out at once.
March 15th A.M. Yip!!!! It is my male from last year. I know because he entered his excluder cavity from last year and didn't need to take any time to learn this type of entrance. He's singing right now so I'm going to go watch some more. P.M. I finished modifying the gourds on the main rack at Hornsby Bend this afternoon (4 gourds modified in 40 minutes), and also converted the aluminum house to larger compartments and excluder doors. I got home just in time to watch 2 martins go into their compartments at my house!
March 14th I'm so excited because tonight an adult male decided to sleep here at my colony!!!!!! I wonder if it is the same male from last year? He's sleeping in one of the new compartments, so I'm not sure. He had a female with him for the first half of the day, but then she left and he went to bed by himself in a 6"x12" compartment in my new aluminum Coates house.
March 13th I'm monitoring the purple martin colony at Hornsby Bend, and after converting 6 gourds to starling resistant&excluder entrances last week, I was so excited to see that the martins have already learned how to use the new entrances. Here's some pics of the martins enjoying their new starling-proof homes.
February 20th I wrote a lot about this day in my hand-written journal, but for now here's just a picture of the first martins I've seen this season at my site (not my martins, but visiting from a nearby colony).
February 10th Still no martins here, but that's actually a good thing because the weather has been pretty bad with several cold fronts coming through. It was very windy today, but tomorrow looks like it will be better. I haven't been playing the dawnsong tape because there's a sharp-shinned hawk hanging around in the back yard. It's been here all winter and when I played the dawnsong tape the other day, he came right away to investigate. Tony from Seguin, TX said they usually migrate north in early April. I'm not going to play the dawnsong or chatter CD until after it migrates, because I wouldn't want to put the martins in any additional danger. Last year several people in this area had their martins come back around Valentine's Day, so it probably won't be long now before I see some martins! My current set-up is 2 modified Coates houses with excluder doors (6 compartments total that I'll be opening this year in those 2 houses), 2 single family wood houses made out of 1/4" plywood and SREH entrances, 6 natural gourds (4 excluder and 2 crescent entrances), and 4 supergourds with crescent entrances. One of my natural gourds has an optional round hole that I added next to the crescent entrance, so I might offer that one round hole at first until nesting begins, and then close it up to make them use the crescent. If some birds have trouble with the excluders on the Coates house, I also will temporarily switch the doors out to round entrances until nesting begins, like I did last year with success. Once they begin nesting, they become devoted to that cavity and will try harder to enter it. I hope my male and female from last year will make it back home safely to their excludered 6"x12" compartment. I put a partial mud dam and some pine needles in it to welcome them home. I'm pretty sure the female was a subadult last year (male was an adult for sure), so this year I'll see if the female's undertail feathers look different this year since she's grown up.
January 17th I am so excited that the martins will be back soon. So far I have 8 new gourds ready, a second modified Coates house, and a single compartment wood house I made. I tried to make each gourd different so that I can see which ones are chosen by the martins, but I know it won't be that easy to tell since the location is important too and I have so many little trees in my back yard. I used a saw today to prune my red buds that had huge suckers coming up next to the main trunk (the suckers had gotten taller than the trees), and also pruned off 2 very low think branches from my Chinese Pistache. I made a brush pile in the back right corner of the yard with all the branches, so hopefully some birds will enjoy that new pile. I ordered another set of roosting arms from the PMCA, and also the daytime chatter CD. Here is a picture of one of the new gourds I worked on this year: http://www.tinybirds.com/purplemartins/gourd.html
