Purple Martin Housing Cleanup: To Clean or Not to Clean?

Well, it's more nuanced than that. After finally having some frost, we've reached the perfect weather window in Missouri where I can start cleaning out my purple martin gourds and storing them.

Since we live in Missouri, where we often get snow & ice in February & March each year (right at the time the purple martins are arriving), I cannot wait until then to clean my gourds. So, I do it every Fall, after the first frost. This year, I thought of my past militant attitude towards cleaning out my gourds - **sparkling clean and NO spots!**, and decided that I wanted to share some thoughts on how I now clean my gourds and clarify some nuanced thoughts on *why* I clean them.

My required gourd-cleaning protection (click on picture for an enlarged view)

For the last 2 years, I'm finding that I'm not quite as concerned as I used to be about getting my gourds sparkling clean. I AM focused, however, on killing the mites, fleas, etc. and their eggs. But, it's not ONLY  for the benefit of the health of the purple martins that will nest there next year. It's also a concern for where I store the gourds. I store them in our shop where I have other things that I would like to keep mite-free. Things like our side-by-side and my native wildflower seed storage bins. A bout of warm weather would result in those eggs hatching and not be a good thing for me (or Mr. Freeze) to encounter.

A couple of years ago, I bought this 100-gallon livestock tank (100-gallon livestock tank - True Value) and I love it! I can soak 14 to 16 gourds at a time in it at a time. Put them in to soak one day, then wash them out the next - and I don't have to kill myself trying to clean all 84 gourds in one day.

100-gallon Livestock Tank from True Value. 16 gourds in the tank

Many people just pull out the old nest material and rinse & dry their gourds / housing. And if you store your gourds in a place where you don't care if there are future outbreaks of such insects, you probably don't need to worry about the Bleach soak. But if you do care, then here is what I do:

• Remove all the old nesting material. 
• Rinse out the remaining loose material.
• Add water and bleach (enough bleach to make a 10% bleach-to-water solution).
• Shove all the gourds into the tank and ensure all the air bubbles are removed. 
• The longer the gourds soak, the easier they'll be to clean out. 

I'm finally done for this season, just in time for the freezing winter weather. I do have a few repairs to make this winter to some of my gourds (broken tunnels, torn treads, etc.), but I can take my time with those. 

I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Persimmon Island Update: Mother Nature Gives an Assist

As I perused my pictures and past blog posts this morning, I had to laugh at myself for all the "project" names I've created. It's Mr. Freeze's fault. I have to use unique names for our project areas to avoid any circular discussions with Mr. Freeze, otherwise, I find him just aimlessly driving the tractor around trying to find me. HA! But, I've found that using statements such as, "you know - meet me at THAT area where the multi-flora rose and autumn olive were taking over", just does not pinpoint anything, because we have so many problem areas with this stuff.

I am absolutely terrible at getting 'before' and sometimes 'after' pictures of our projects. But, last week, Bob decided to bush-hog a path through Persimmon Island, so we could see what was growing and finish eradicating any remaining non-native plants, if needed. After he cut a path, I was stunned when I walked through to get an idea of the effort.

WOW!

Flowers, flowers, flowers - lots of yellow flars everywhere! Removing all the non-native plants has allowed the native flowers to spread into the partial shade areas.

Native Indian Grass, Tickseed Sunflower (aka Bearded Beggarticks / bidens), goldenrod and New England Asters in bloom.

I was hit in the head repeatedly by the thousands of Pennsylvania Leatherwings flying through...for some reason they really love these flowers. The bumblebees are much better at avoiding my forehead.

A bumblebee on one of 11 varieties of sunflowers / bidens in Missouri

Today, I walked through to start a more targeted eradication. With all the flowers and native plants & trees in here, it is no longer an option to do broad swaths of herbicide application. So, I got out my treatment bucket, my gloves and my cutters. I started with the hundreds of new cherry tree sprouts. While the cherry trees are native, I have other goals for this particular grove: Silky dogwoods, spice bush, river oats, etc., so the cherry trees here have to go.

I cut all the sprouts and treated the cut stumps with a small paint brush and a highly concentrated mix of glyphosate. Using Tordon in this area is no longer an option, since the roots of everything in this small area are likely intertwined together and I don't want to kill the fragrant sumac, persimmons, plums, nor the hackberries that we worked so hard to liberate from the mess!

A small bucket with my herbicide, a paintbrush as an applicator and my chainsaw oil. This prevents me from turning over my main container and accidentally spilling any on the ground.

I practice very careful treatment with the paint brush when there are undesired trees growing up right next to stuff I want to keep like the fragrant sumac.

A rogue cherry tree growing up in the middle of the fragrant sumac. It had to go.

I was disappointed to find some winter creeper had re-sprouted, so I did have to bring in my sprayer and treat it. This stuff is a nuisance and almost as bad as Japanese honeysuckle. It hides on the earthen floor of shaded forest areas until there's such a large colony of it, and then it takes a lot of effort to get rid of it.

Winter creeper - a non-native climbing vine.

I also managed to do a few small sprays on some of the very small twigs of Autumn Olive that had re-sprouted after Bob's mow.

Autumn Olive - a non-native shrub.

After carefully re-treating the non-native crap, I was able to get my camera out and enjoy all the flowers and the bugs that were landing on them.

Pennsylvania Leatherwing and a bumblebee share a flower.

 

View from the south - before:

View from the south - after:
 

Goldenrod, New England aster and Indian Grass have now spread into the area we have removed multi-flora rose, Autumn olive, winter creeper, and Eastern red cedar trees.

View from the north - before:

Removed several large Autumn olive bushes in this area, along with multi-flora rose.

View from the north - after:

The bidens and goldenrod are starting to march into their new growing space!

There were a few people that didn't agree with our approach of removing the Eastern Red cedar trees, but we needed to clear them so that we could have better access to the earthen floor. That's the only way to remove ALL the invasive plants and to have more scattered sunlight for the stuff we'll be planting next fall.

View from the West - before:

View from the West - after (not exactly the same angle as I didn't remember the last photo I had taken from the West):

A large bank of bidens.

There were also some very pleasant surprises in the grove.

It looks like "Gary" - our resident groundhog - has decided to move in now. Not sure if he's still living here, but he certainly enjoyed the area for a time. And we name all our groundhogs, "Gary", so yeah, we're sure it's "Gary" who moved in.

Gary the Groundhog's home.

I also found a couple of new native plant volunteers - White Vervain, that has started growing since we cleared here! Yay! 

White Vervain - Verbena urticifolia - native

And these, "Whirling butterflies"

Whirling butterflies - Oenothera lindheimeri - native

After finding winter creeper and Autumn olive still growing in here, we probably need to wait another season before re-planting with native shrubs. I really want to get everything in this fall, but that would be too risky. Patience grasshopper...patience!

For tracking my progress, I've added links to my videos we've taken of this area as we've progressed.

Persimmon Island - Phase 1 - December, 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9gjH0lJ2RY&t 

 

Persimmon Island - Phase 2 - November, 2022:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzGbzB9XfHg&t 

 

Persimmon Island after clearing everything out during the winter 2022-2023.

https://youtu.be/kVbbQLVKCPM?si=iZVviIRt7eIlyEgS

 

 

 

Purple Martins 2024 & Building a Waterfall Birdbath

This year's purple martin season just flew by. I wasn't able to spend as much time with them as I usually did in previous years, but it was enough to do nest checks and make sure there were no major issues. I wasn't able to do nest checks for the last 4 weeks due to some other unforeseen issues, but, my numbers this year at last count were: 82 pair, roughly 310 fledged (without confirmation of the last 8 nests). They all finally left my site during the second week of July.

Yes, I still had my resident GHO show up...she's kinda like Dory in the movie, "Finding Nemo"...she just keeps swimmin' hoping she'll find & catch a martin one night. 

I'm sure, in the end, she probably caught a few that exited for the magical "Dawn Song" hours, but at least it wasn't a slaughter. The cages continue to work well, especially with the netting underneath. I had a very determined Sharp-Shinned hawk at the beginning of the season, prior to my mounting of the netting. He/She actually came up inside the cages a couple of times to try to catch a martin. But after mounting the netting on the racks, he/she never attempted that again.

Great Horned Owl - May 6, 2024 - 9:00 PM

At the beginning of the season, the purple martins tend to be very noisy - especially during the daytime hours. I've actually seen the owl perched in a tree in the distant treeline during the day, while she observed my colony. Probably planning her strategy. She really does try to figure out the perfect angles.

Great Horned Owl, stalking my colony from the ground. May 6, 2024 - 9:12 PM

You really have to give her an A+ for effort.

Great Horned Owl, stalking my colony from the nearby perching rack. May 7, 2024 - 4:38 AM

I had been meaning to construct a new bird bath and an elderly gentleman that came by to pick up some stuff ended up pushing that decision up in my priority list when he accidentally backed over my old bird bath arrangement. I had been itching to re-do it anyway, given the bird bath arrangements my friends were sharing on social media. So, very frankly, after he destroyed my original setup, I may have secretly cheered. Ha!

Given the various issues I had with my old bird bath (and lessons-learned), I had a better plan this time.

I wanted:

-  a 'waterfall' bath with an upper & lower tray; 

- more water capacity in the trays themselves; 

- a large capacity water container (so I didn't have to keep refilling the trays during extreme heat) ;

- a pump to circulate the water; and

- a better location for birdie access and out of the way of people who should no longer be driving a vehicle.

I found the perfect trays on Amazon (thanks to a friend's help) and hubby and I decided to make a trip to our local hardware store to try to find ideas on how to make the water supply system more self-sustaining. After quite some time walking around, a store associate helped us find a nifty item called a "bulkhead flange". OMG, this thing is awesome! It has a gasket on one side to help seal the hole and a lock nut on the other side so you can tighten it. We drilled the right size hole in the bottom of the tray, mounted it, then used a small length of PVC pipe to set the level of the water for the lower tray. I placed some screen over the hole and used a zip tie to hold it in place. It filters a lot of stuff out before it can get into the water-holding bin.

The bin below is a 20-gallon storage container (Walmart). We bought a 45 & a 90 degree elbow and enough 1.5" PVC to make sure if we made a mistake, we still had some remaining with which we could make more mistakes.

We then cut a short, 6" piece of PVC pipe to add to the 90 degree elbow, for the water return. It's also fitted into the elbow, just tight enough that I can remove the bin lid and reach in and twist it off when I decide I need to clean the bin.

After finding a highly-rated solar powered pump, we connected tubing and the flow control. I thought we would need a flow control since the pump has a 350 gph flow, but turns out we ended up not needing the controller.

 

 

The black outflow gadget mounted in the picture below was able to be mounted to the tubing and it is held in place by some cool rocks I was able to find.

 

 

 

I then placed the pump into the filled bin and we drilled the access hole large enough to hold the water supply line and the power cable that runs to the solar panel. 

 

 

After some "proof of concept" stuff (as Mr. Freeze likes to call it), we have landed on the final product. It did take awhile to get the tilt on the top bath just right and we ended up using some of the leftover composite decking materials to support the bottoms of the trays (they're water-proof & will last forever). 

We used cinder blocks on either side to support the planks & trays and my grandsons camouflaged the blocks with our cool rocks.

My purple martins' reactions to it were rather funny - they're such curious buggers! They would do low & slow flying passes to check it out, but never did land.

 

Best of all, we have a 5-star rating from our many customers. They think the price - "pose for a photo" is more than fair. Clicking on the pictures will launch them into a larger window for better viewing.

Male & female bluebirds

Male cardinal

Female Cowbird - contemplating her life decisions.

Female Orchard Oriole

The look on the field sparrow's face (in the lower tray), when a pair of Grey Catbirds fly in to take a bath (hehe).

Field Sparrow - he/she has earned frequent bather awards.

Dickcissel contemplating a bath

Cardinal and a Bluebird

Blue-winged warbler (yellow bird) and Indigo Bunting

Female Indigo Bunting

Creating a New Rhythm

This is going to be a totally different post on my nature blog than what you're used to - but I'm finally getting back in my groove, so here goes. I hope you'll be patient with me as I work through this. I spent the last year wrapped up in what was (for me, anyway), a very dramatic change to my life - deciding if / when to retire. Sometimes, the decision process was even driving me to the edge of depression. Along with some physical issues that I needed to resolve, I needed to answer some questions for myself - what would I do if I quit my job? The biggest part of my identity has been wrapped up in my career. I like to be busy and I was very good at what I did - and most importantly, I was very happy at my job. How and why would you quit something you enjoy doing? Finally, I made my decision and I announced it in April, 2024...because I decided there were other things that I would enjoy doing equally as much - probably even more.

Friday, August 2nd, 2024 was my last day as a career woman. I am officially retired! My manager setup a very nice "virtual farewell" party (my colleagues were literally scattered across the globe), and all the warm congratulations and reminiscing of the times we had spent together working on various projects brought tears to my eyes and made my heart ache. But not enough to turn back - I had spent a whole year making this decision and I knew it was the right one for me.

My husband took me out for a very special retirement dinner to celebrate. After working all these years (25 years at this company), and 45+ years total, it felt good to say, "I'm done!". But whew, boy - as my access to the company systems was terminated and I unplugged my computer and turned off my phone, I started to feel really unsteady on my feet. It was strangely unsettling - and it felt like my boat started rocking on some rough seas. I knew that it was not because I was questioning my decision, but something else. 

The train ride I took in Germany and half-way there, realized I was going the wrong direction. Yeah, fun times!

 

I stood on my front porch Friday evening and tried to sort through all these new (and surprising) emotions. As I listened to the indigo buntings chirping to each other from the various treetops, (apparently, I have a huge flock of them here), the Bob-white quail calling, a particularly loud Dickcissel and the hot breeze baking my face, I finally realized I was not really 'looking' at the landscape. I started to focus my eyes on my prairie and the flowers blooming, my new bird bath, my garden that needs tending and all the other things that I WANT to engage in now. I realized, I had lost my "working-woman" rhythm. I have had a 5-day workweek with a purpose and a rhythm with a known schedule for the weekends for many, many years. Now my tether was gone and I felt like I was flapping around out here in the wind without an anchor.

 

A Dickcissel checks out the birdbath and tries to decide whether he can trust me.

Saturday, I packed up all the work equipment into my FedEx box and rearranged my desk - another step of closure. I turned my work phone back on to make sure I had it properly set to go and ensure there were no messages waiting for me. A message appeared to let me know I was no longer allowed any access to anything. WELL....I guess I really am done! 

My trip to Salzburg, Austria - yeah, we're gonna climb that hill in the background up to that castle. HA!

Salzburg, Austria - we made it!

I puttered around the house Saturday. One of my goals for my first week was to clean out my closet - specifically, to get rid of some of the work clothes that I will likely never wear again. I had confidently told myself, THAT task should be easy. But, as I previewed the job, I realized this was going to be a very emotional task. Just too many memories tied to these clothes - I remember wearing that skirt in Germany and that outfit when I toured Salzburg, Austria on a 2-week work trip, etc., etc. My heart started to ache again.....NOPE, nope, nuh-uh, I can't do this yet. 

My first trip to Germany - my German ancestor's cellar!

 

Trip to Munich, Germany - King Ludwig's Palace

Sunday, I decided to clean out my bird bath before the mosquito larvae grew into adult mosquitos! Dang, it's SO hot...I told my husband, I should have waited another month or two to retire, so the weather would have been cooler and I could get outside more to vent these emotions. But, as my husband said, "you could have played that game for years, and never retired". 

Today, Monday, August 5th, I realized the first benefit of retiring - no more "Ugggghhhh, it's Monday!" for me! And no more alarm clocks...unless I want to set one. 

I'm still feeling a bit unsteady today, so, for now, I'm trying to take it easy for the first week. Eventually, I'll find all the pieces to put into place so I can establish a new rhythm - a fun, "NOW, I get to do ANYTHING I want to", rhythm. And steady my ship once again.

Me - on a trail cut thru our Tall Grass prairie.

Our piece of heaven - Gobbler's Knob