After an initial rough start to the 2018 season due to some unanticipated moves by the GHO, I was able to finish the year with a total of 76 pair and we fledged 360 young.
Kicking off this season with a warmer-than-usual Spring, many of my adult pairs were able to get started with nest-building and egg-laying in parallel during the same 2 weeks. This resulted in many, many nests fledging simultaneously from July 3rd through July 14th, with hundreds of martins returning in the evening, filling the arms on the gourd racks.
The new fledging tree behind my house held dozens of newly-fledged martins. As I watched them every day, I worried that the hawks would be drawn to such easy prey, but it never became a problem The tippy-top of this tree is easily 100 feet tall and the new fledges were able to drop and gain speed quickly. They were safer up there than they were on the top perch rods on my gourd racks.
The young fledges demanded food from whomever came flying in, whether it was one of their brothers & sisters or not.
After watching over the young fledges roosting on the arms for several nights and wondering if I was making a mistake by allowing them to roost there, it became apparent the owl had either tried & failed to broach the nets beneath, or wasn't quite sure she could keep from getting tangled in the ropes. Either way, the netting was the final touch to my cages this year that allowed for a nice balance of allowing the martins to escape during a hawk attack, but also kept the owl out (see this post from June, that was the reason I had to install the netting:
http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2018/06/nest-checks-new-hatchlings-and-nets.html)
This was the first year in my 12 years of hosting purple martins that I've had this many fledges returning every night. It was also the first year, the new fledges have been able to safely roost all night on the gourd arms of my racks - protected from raccoons, snakes, and owls.
This was also the first year in the last 5 years of dealing with the GHO where I've felt I have created the best balance between providing protection for the martins and coexisting with both a GHO and a Barred owl.
Instead of the usual fretting, worrying and anxiety, this year was filled with the sheer joy of seeing so many healthy young'uns on the rails and in the surrounding trees.
I'm glad I never gave up the fight and surrendered, because now, I have a lot of experience with what does and does not work when you have to contend with owls.
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