The Best and the Worst of Years

2008 so far is starting off to be a banner year here in Rocky Mount. I saw my first martin (an ASY female) 9 days earlier than ever before. As of 4/27/08, I have 49 definite nests and 9 maybes. Two of the nests had their first eggs in them on the 29th. The subbies have just started arriving in force. I now have a total of 4 Larry Melcher repeating traps that are doing an awesome job of trapping both starlings and house sparrows. I have finally converted to 100% SREH, which consist of roughly 50% WDC and 50% Excluder II. Also, I have reduced the number of brown gourds, but intend to always have at least two per gourd rack in honor of my late father, whose idea it was to use them, and I firmly believe that the brown gourds got my colony started.

Nest check on 5/10/08 revealed 49 active nests that has a total of 238 eggs between them. 3 of the nests had 7 egg clutches. The first is due to hatch on 5/17/08. I, also, had 19 other nests that showed signs of definite nest building, but no eggs yet. Also, I have 5-10 more that may be the starts of nest. Of the gourds with active nests, 18 were plastic and 31 were naturals. Of the gourds with active nests, 36 were white, and the other 13 were one of the three shades of brown that I am using. On the entrance side, I had 23 WDC entrances chosen, 21 Excluder II entrances chosen, 3 crescent entrances chosen, and 2 Brain Naughton 5 holer entrances chosen. All but 5 of my gourds have tunnels.

Nest checks on 5/17/08 revealed 56 active nests that had either eggs, chicks, or both. I had, at this nest check, 249 eggs and 36 newly born chicks. Hatching began on 5/17/08 which was right on schedule.

Nests checks on 5/25/08 revealed 66 active nests with eggs, nestlings, or both. 146 eggs were found and 185 nestlings have hatched. One nest of 5 eggs had the eggs disappear and a nest of 5 new hatchlings had all of them dead. I suspect that a subbie male had paid these two nests a visit. Since there is still time for renest, I suspect that two of the gained nests for the check were renests from these two failed nests. If I don't gain any more nests, I have grown by 36.76% in nesting pairs for 2008.

Well, this went bad and this turned out to be the year of the jumper. Wow, what a last two days with more to come. We should be in the mid to high 80s, but we are setting record after record of high 90s to just a little over 100 degrees with heat indexes of of 105 to 110 degrees. We are having jumper after jumper. Now, bear in mind, that my gourds all have at least six 7/16" holes in the bottom, plus two 3/4" elbows in the top for ventilation. So far, in the last two days, we have had 12 jumpers. 9 have survived and are being fed by Linda and myself. 3 did not make it. We are actually watching them jump. They are coming from white naturals, white plastic, and the brown naturals, so color isn't a factor. Earliest fledge date is the 12th. These chicks are not all coming from the same nests. It is kind of across the board. There are no mites, so that is not the problem. We ended up with 35 jumpers. 24 were seen in time to get them into the house for rehab and care, but 3 died as they were just too dehydrated and/or young. 11 died on the ground before we could get to them.

We are still be plagued by the pair of Cooper's hawk and now at least one Great Horned Owl has joined in.

I do have two thousand crickets on hand. Also, last year I bought 5000 mealworms which we have been raising for early spring supplemental feeding and jumper feeding. But, wouldn't you know it, now there are very few mealworms and a lot a beetles. So, I am going to order more crickets and a bunch more mealworms to help with these 21 survivors, which I expect will increase in numbers as the weather will remain the same for the next 5 days at least. I am not going to bother raising mealworms anymore since I had very few when I needed them. Whatever is left after this next order, is either going to be frozen or go into the fridge until they are needed. There is no shortage of natural food as I have witnessed on my 3 nest cams and what those young are being fed. Also, I got some Science Diet Adult Cat Food as well as soon NuPreen AvianMaintenance Natural Diet. The Science Diet is hard pellets which must be soaked in water. They are the size of a pea when soaked. The NuPreen is about the size of a full sized cricket when soaked. For smaller nestlings, they can or should be broken in half. For bigger ones, you can feed the full sized. I also used scrambled eggs, but they were not the nestlings favorites. They were eaten, but the nestlings preferred, in order, crickets, Science Diet Adult Cat Food, NuPreen, and then the scrambled eggs. On 6/13/08, I fledged 5 of the nestlings and the colony took right to them and appeared to be trying to help them be Martins. On 6/14/08, I fledged 6 more. Now, we (my wife Linda and I) are taking care of 10 nestlings and all are doing well. They should flegde within the week. As of 6/20/08, 20 of 21 nestlings we were raising have been successfully fledged. We are still taking care of one that is just still too young to fly more than 75 feet.

I have picked up at least two more nesting pair to give me 68 pair for the year. I have 340 chicks left and 13 eggs left to hatch. So far, we have lost 9 chicks to various problems.

Overall view of my colony

The Four Larry Melcher Repeating Traps are shown by the red arrows.

This Larry Melcher Trap caught two starlings this morning. They check in, but don't check out, at least not alive.

This is the main nesting material and oyster shell gathering area. Each section is about 15' long and 4-5' wide. I also have a Bed N Breakfast from Creative Universe, but most of the birds seem to prefer to use this area. The nesting material is just hay and pine needles. I do put pe-nests in every other nesting cavity.

The subbies are moving in, so there is a lot of gourd claiming and protecting going on.

An ASY male taking in the rays after rain all day yesterday.

Taking it easy before serious nest building begins.

Just a little activity

One way to tell that subbies are arriving is when the females start to guard the entrance to their gourd

Just enjoying their porches

The following are just some shots of my colony

Throughout my last two nests checks, this female would not move from her nest. I know that she has at least 5 eggs.

This group of birds is waiting for me to finish checking their gourd rack so they can get back to feeding chicks and sitting on eggs.

I was constantly plagued by a pair of Cooper's Hawks this year. My Purple Martin decoys have been attacked several times. It is amazing that so far, the hawks have left the dove decoys alone. I actually got to witness one attack on a decoy, and the hawk completely flipped around the perch with the decoy in its talons before it let go and left quickly. I feel these decoys have given many of my Martins time to escape.

Martins returning after a false hawk alarm.

Another of them returning to the gourd rack after a hawk false alarm.

Just to let you know that Martins get used to gun fire. My target and backstop for my air rifle is just 20 feet from this rack. I had been shooting for about 1/2 hour this particular morning, and went to change targets. The Martins really didn't care at all.

Hmmmmmmm............I think I will go buzz that dog down there. While my dogs don't bother the Martins, the Martins sure love to buzz them. The dogs totally ignore the buzzing even though the Martins get within 3 feet of them and squawking the entire time.