Purple Martin Colony Monitoring: The Upgrade to ReoLink

When it was raining & cold, I was so ready for this season to get started! Now with the heat and humidity, I vacillate between wanting it over & done versus enjoying the show. The problem with trying to enjoy the show right now is all the bugs that attack me when I'm outside. I'm starting to realize, it is my destiny to just experience some minor suffering to do the outdoor things I love.

We are in the stage right now where there are tons of feeding trips occurring in my colony. With only 5 nests fledged, the vast majority of my nests have young, ranging from 1-day old up to 20 days old. That's a LOT of food requirements. Take THAT bugs!! It's amazing to watch how fast the adults deliver food, then depart on another hunting trip. I can always tell when there's another nest preparing to fledge because the fledgling escort crews show up and the normally-very-quiet colony (during this stage), starts becoming very vocal. So, I go watch.

The small escort crew (because the other adults are working - feeding their young!)

It always fascinates me and I ask - HOW do they (the escort crews) KNOW there are young martins about to fledge? Does a martin-wide memo go out in the Purple Martin Kingdom to notify them all of the date & time they need to show up? I need more information, please (and send me a copy of that memo!).

Today's escort crew is small, compared to others. Probably because the vast majority of my colony are parents engaged in feeding their young.

I recently received a lot of questions regarding how I monitor my colony. Which system? Does it record all night? Does it use WiFi - or do you have to connect via an Ethernet cable?

After using the Browning Trail cameras for years to monitor my colony, I was getting tired of having to change out batteries, retrieve & replace the cards every day, but the most daunting realization - I realized I was probably missing some of the owl's activities because the limitations that are always a 'feature' of game cameras. If the owl's attack was too fast, if she was out of range or even didn't cross the required pixels to trigger the camera, or the camera didn't trigger fast enough, I wouldn't know about her attacks. It was time to improve my game. I had already spent a lot of time, effort & money on my systems and the caging, so, why not verify it's working? 

I realized Bob and I had set this up about 5 years ago and while I knew all the answers about it then, I had forgotten the very, very deep details about this system. Details that are critical to choosing a system for this particular application. So, I'm documenting them here, and sharing them with you, in case you ever need them. The best part? NO MORE batteries, NO MORE cards, and NO MORE missed activities!

We decided on 4 Reolink RLC-511W cameras (look for the cameras & package deals like this one to be on sale!). The most important qualities for me:

- Zoom - Optical Zoom (digital zoom is too pixelated)! (my cameras are 75' from my colony). I've dedicated one camera to each rack - zoom & focus the racks (3 racks) and the 4th camera to monitor the overall yard (not zoomed in). 

- Night vision (they have an IR range of 100'). We added the IR illuminator, which extends the range of the IR out to 300', just to ensure complete coverage. Because "100 feet" really means, "only about 50 effective feet". That's true with all the "night-vision" cameras I've ever tried.

- Most importantly - continuous recording, all night long. Living out in the country, I found motion detection just isn't something I should use. Rain and every large bug that runs / flies across the screen triggers the recordings and I would sometimes miss the owl.

- WiFi - we didn't want to run yet another wire to connect it to the router. 

My 4 Reolink RLC-511W cameras + the IR illuminator. Bob built these shelves for me, making the whole system easy to remove for winter storage. 

The NVR system (2 TB) storage allows me to record continuously all night. In the morning early hours, the system will FTP the files to another drive where I can then view them on my computer screens with my morning coffee (at 15X speed!). I use "VLC Media Player" (free download) to review my recordings quickly. You can increase the speed of the review, or just pause the video and drag the slider button to watch the video for changes! Now I can see the whole colony and not miss a thing!
 

The NVR system combined with a cheap monitor! 

ccc

A quick check of the monitor and you can see if there are any issues before bedtime!

Behind the Scenes:

We found these weather-proof boxes at Lowe's. The top one contains the 'dongles' (3 wires per camera - 1 with a reset button, 1 for an Ethernet cable connection, and one for the power connection) coming from the cameras. Ugghhh - tuck that stuff away in a box and wear a face shield when you open the box and it all comes sprawling out over you!

 

2 weather-tight boxes - Lowe's and Home Depot carry these.

The IR illuminator is mounted on a saw horse next to the cameras. It can be easily maneuvered to highlight the right parts of the racks. Just don't point it at the ground too much or you get a lot of reflection from the grass! Ask me how I know. 😏

Outdoor plugs and weather-proof covers on our patio made the task of setting up power for the cameras a breeze. Direct power is required if you want to record continuously. None of the night vision cameras will record continuously on battery power alone. 

Outdoor power supply with weather proof cover.

Some electrical cord hangers and you have a neat, organized patio and no one tripping over the electrical cord!

By removing the 4 screws that are used to mount these boards to the porch posts, I can quickly disconnect the wires and bring the cameras inside for winter storage in our unfinished basement.

The cameras stored in our basement. Keeping them out of the winter weather extremes will help extend the life of the cameras.

I created this video in the process of documenting our setup. 

Yes, it's an outlay of cash. Is it worth it? I emphatically say, "YES!" It has been the last piece of the puzzle that I needed to give me insight to what was happening with my colony every night and give me the information I needed, in case I needed to quickly adapt in order to thwart her ability to catch martins.

This is a video from the camera that I use to monitor the entire yard:

I am so happy to see that the owl's attacks have been lessening every year. I'm not going to mention a number because I don't want to jinx myself (or my colony). But knowing what's happening in my yard every night is helping me to sleep more peacefully. And, I've repurposed the Browning cameras to watch the activities on my trails so I can see if Molly is still hanging around! Win, WIN!

 

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.