The Cornbread Story - A Recipe for Success

The weather here in Texas County, Missouri has been less than ideal for raising baby purple martins. We have had lots & lots of rain. Lots. Then, if it wasn't raining, it was cold. Or, it was raining AND cold. My nest check on May 16th revealed that I had 5 pairs (according to the official, "how do you count your pairs" rules) of purple martins. Meaning, 5 nests had eggs. I knew all of the rest were also gearing up to start laying. Then the weather pooped out on us and I thought they would lose all the existing eggs and any that were laid in the meantime. 

During a nest check on June 1st, I discovered that was not the case. I found a lot of nests with 1 to 3-day old nestlings. So, the purple martins had shaken their fist at Mother Nature and said, "We SHALL carry on"! I did find 2 dead nestlings and 3 nestlings missing from another nest (there were originally 5 eggs and only found 2 nestlings). Not bad for a brutal 3 weeks. And sub-adults arrived about around May 20th, so lots of fighting going on. As of today, June 20th - I have 82 pair with 266 nestlings, and 66 eggs still to hatch. My oldest ones (from the May 16th nest check) started fledging yesterday!

I've been seeing some posts on various purple martin groups where landlords without predator guards have discovered they've sadly lost their entire colony to a snake or raccoon attack. What makes some of these losses even more difficult is that some of these landlords were given the predator guard information 2 to 3 years ago. Such needless loss.

I have been thinking about my father-in-law a lot lately and the very funny things he did - that will relate to this post.

Dad and his garden

When Bob's Dad was still alive and we were building our new homee here, he would frequently invite us over for dinner. One of his favorite sides was cornbread. One night, as we were eating it, I noticed that the cornbread looked gritty and more importantly, tasted like we were eating ground up cornmeal. When I asked him if he had changed the recipe, he said, "yeah, I decided not to add flour. It doesn't need any flour anyway - it still rises and tastes good". 

Bob Jr. and Bob Sr. - Dad loved coming over & supervising the construction of everything at our new home site here in Missouri. Even the pond.

"Welllll...that's debatable", I thought (to myself), "are you losing your tastebuds"? Hehe. As time went on, he started leaving other various things out of the recipe; salt, milk (instead, using water), etc., so I started making the cornbread and bringing it over. His only rule was, "NO sugar". I could abide with that one.

On June 5th, my neighbor asked me if it was too late to set up his site for purple martins. Well, no, if you get it up quickly (next 2-3 weeks). Sub Adults are still coming in to my site and all my gourds are full. As I gathered the information to give him, and prepared my spiel for him, I thought of my father-in-law and laughed - "there's a really simple recipe for success".  

The recipe to hosting purple martins successfully - and KEEP hosting them far into the future - is really simple. 

The primary ingredients - good, manageable housing; good housing location (at least 60 feet +) from trees, removal/eradication of non-native nest competitors (HOSP & starlings), and more importantly, after you attract them - ADD a predator guard to your poles to keep them and protect them.

So, what ARE the required ingredients for a long-term successful site (click on the table below to enlarge)? 

My Recipe Card: 

 

 

As I gave the 'recipe' for success to my neighbor, I thought again of the cornbread story. He setup a quick, homemade gourd rack on June 13, 2025. As of today, June 20th - he has 2 pair of purple martins that look like they will settle in and hopefully nest this year. I'm sure these pairs are overflow from my site and that's why I have no plans to expand my housing. It's so much fun to watch his face when he sees them landing and investigating his new site!

Bob and I laugh about it often when I'm making a dish and he'll quip, "you don't need no milk in that...you probably don't even need cornmeal....!"...and we'll laugh at the fond memories of the funny things his Dad did...and I realize how much I miss him.

 

Bluebirds, Chickadees and Tree Swallows - OH MY!

Over the last 2 weeks, we've mounted 4 new bluebird/ tree swallow nest boxes and I now have 20 total! Thanks to all my friends for sharing their ideas and pictures of how they have mounted new nest boxes (special Thanks to Tammy Seaman for sharing her detailed plans!). I gleaned many ideas from their experiences!

With nesting season in full swing, I now have 5 bluebird pairs nesting with 20 eggs (at last check), 1 pair of chickadees with 8 eggs, and 14 tree swallow nests with no eggs yet. It did NOT take the birds very  long to find the new nest boxes!

A Black capped chickadee nest can be identified by all the moss and fine hair materials they use.

Black capped chickadee nest - photo credit - Molly Plank. Where DO they find all that moss?

*Note: This fantastic photo of a chickadee nest with an egg and nestlings was provided by my friend, Molly Plank - my chickadee eggs have not hatched yet!

We were originally going to build another 10 - 15 nest boxes this past winter, but many things got in the way, including the fact that we couldn't find a good (and reasonably priced) supply of wood. 

So, I gathered a bunch of my old nest boxes and used the still-good parts to construct 4 'new' houses that didn't leak. They'll still be replaced next year, but, for this year, they'll suffice. Then the challenges of how to mount them arose. Mr. Freeze hates the 4x4" posts. It is very hard to dig a hole for them AND, very hard to protect them properly. Besides, we have a bundle of unused t-posts, so we wanted to find a suitable method for using those. They are easy to get in & out of the ground here and they're easier to mount a wobbly predator guard on.

My requirements for setting up a nest box were:

- reasonably priced mounting supplies (in "kathy-speak" - that means, "cheap"!)

- easy! AND fast!

- easy-to-remember repeatable steps (because getting old sucks!)

- final plans approved by Mr. Freeze 😆

After reviewing everyone's ideas - and sharing them with Mr. Freeze, he came up with the optimal plan. Here's the list of supplies, tools and a description of how we did it. Now, next year we only need to build new nest boxes ...and maybe refer back to this post, so we'll remember the supplies and how we mounted them this year😁!

Supplies (per nest box):

Quantity	Supply
2	1" pipe wall brackets
2	1.5" - 2.5" (38/63 mm) hose clamps
1	1" x 18" schedule-40 pvc pipe (can buy in 6’ or longer lengths and cut-to-length)
1	T-post
1	6" wide x 5' length of galvanized stove pipe (I already had several of these, so we cut them in half with a cutter wheel on an angle grinder to make 2 - 30" long pipes)
5	8" zip ties
2	8" lengths of heavy duty wire (for mounting guard)
-	1/4" hardware cloth (cut to fit snugly inside the 6" galvanized stove pipe)

Tools:

Nut driver (to tighten hose clamps)Wire cutters

Portable Drill

1 bluebird house (add 'bird spikes' on top if you have owl issues)

T-post driver / sledge hammer

Wire cutters

With 4 newly-modified nest boxes, we found some nice spots on the trails to set them up. 

 The hose clamps are used to hold the 1" pvc pipe securely to the T-post.

You can use a nut driver to close the hose clamp, or a flat-head screwdriver.

Place the pvc against the T-post, slide the hose clamps over it, space them out and tighten them down.

 Place the pipe so that it overlaps the t-post by ~5". Tighten the hose clamps to hold it in place.

Drill a hole all the way through the pvc pipe for the 8" heavy duty wire. Drill another hole all the way through perpendicular to the first.

Drill a hole for the support wire through opposite sides of the pvc pipe.

While holding your galvanized stove pipe in place, run a support wire through one side of the stove pipe, then through the pvc pipe out the opposite edge of the stove pipe. Run the second wire through the opposite set of holes in the same manner. The 2 wires should rest on top of the t-post where they cross each other as in the picture below.

It's a lot easier to look at the picture below, than it is to describe this process in words.😅

 

Run the wires perpendicular to each other through your pre-drilled holes in the galvanized stove pipe.

Wrap a zip tie around the wires and the pvc pipe to keep the guard from sliding back & forth.

Bend the ends of your support wires over so they cannot slide out of the stove pipe.

Your 1/4" hardware cloth should be cut to fit snugly inside the galvanized stove pipe. You can get a very close size approximation by placing the stove pipe on top of the hardware cloth and tracing the circle with a black Sharpie. Use your wire cutters to cut the hardware cloth. Cut a small hole in the appropriate place for the pvc pipe then slide the hardware cloth over the pipe and into the top of the guard. Use zip ties to secure the hardware cloth to the support wires. This will prevent any snakes from climbing up the t-post and killing your nesting birds.

It's important to make sure your hardware cloth completely fills up the inside of the predator guard, so a snake cannot get past it.

Now mount your house to the pvc pipe using the pipe wall brackets. We also added a short center screw in the middle of the bracket to ensure the house would not rotate on the pipe. Make sure the house does not sit on top of the predator guard, or the guard will not 'rock' and will allow raccoons to climb it.

A very small, short screw can be screwed into the middle of the bracket and into the pvc to keep the house from rotating.

I use these bird spikes on top of all my bluebird and tree swallow housing to prevent any owls from landing on top and spooking out the nesting birds. Before using these spikes, I had found many of my nesting birds had been killed by our resident Barred and Great Horned owls. Since adding the spikes they have not been able to get to them.

By cutting a large hole in the door (approx. 3" wide x 2" tall), I can use this vinyl (siding from leftover building materials) and cut out different entrances used by various birds. In this case, Bob drilled out a 1.5" hole with a Forstner bit. But, if a tree swallow decides to move in, I can remove this plate and put a TRES slot entrance on this hole.

The doors on each nest box also have the set screws already installed for the Van Ert trap...just in case it's needed. It's old, but this nest box will suffice for this year.

These 'plates' can be easily changed out, based on which bird species is trying to claim the nest box.

TRES slot entrance - 7/8" tall x 2.25" wide. Exact height is critical to exclude English House Sparrows. Use digital calipers to get correct size.