The Birds & The Bees

  This year will be my 7th year having to deal with a Great Horned Owl and a Barred Owl here on Gobbler's Knob. The first couple of year...

My last nest check revealed I have 73 pair so far, with a total of 84 gourds offered.  I continue to be amazed at the resiliency of the purp...

For the last three weeks, I have been swarmed by sub-adult purple martins as they flooded into my site, harassing the already-established ...

When purple martin landlord, John Miller from St. Louis (who also manages a few public sites in Forest Park), reported a sighting of a sub-a...

On Saturday, 3/26 it reached 69 degrees on Gobbler's Knob. But with the ever-present Spring wind, it felt a bit cooler - maybe 68 degree...

I woke up at 3:40 AM Monday morning and decided while I was up anyway, I would check on my purple martins before snuggling back in.  With ou...

This year, I decided that I wanted a wide-angle view of my entire colony at night, from a general monitoring viewpoint, allowing me to also ...

Last year I learned a hard lesson.  Never say, "never" when it comes to owls, snakes, racoons, and other predators that could prey...

Finally!  For a couple months now, the weather has been too hot to go out and start the cleanup of all the gourds and housing.  This past we...

As of today, I only have 5 nests with young that have not fledged.  It has been getting pretty quiet around here during the day.  About 90% ...

Make no mistake over this writing - I am extremely distressed over this issue, but this is how I deal with my distress - I write to make my...

I've been monitoring my colony pretty closely and even ran the owl off the perches on Friday, 7/4.  I had to leave for a business trip l...