Dismantling a Passion

A few weeks ago, I received a message from a long-time purple martin friend - I'll call her "Jane" to protect her privacy. She informed me that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and only had about 2 months left to wander this mortal coil. While my shock was nowhere near what hers must have been, I was still stunned. She's only about 10 years older than me and the medical community had failed in her initial diagnosis. But her request was even more surprising.

Jane and I had never met in person, but we had spoken on the phone several times over the last few years about our shared experiences with owl issues and messaged each other on Facebook....replied to each other's comments about purple martins, etc. So, I felt like I *knew* her already we had become friends through our interactions. Her request - she wanted me to come and remove all her purple martin and bluebird housing - all of it - for free - and give it to a good home.

Note, this is a picture of my Troyer Super system gourd rack 

I've never received a call like that one, so I had no frame of reference on how to react or deal with this type of request. "Of course", I replied, "I'll help in any way I can". She wanted me to come dismantle everything and haul it away as soon as I could, so that her husband wouldn't have to deal with it after her death. My brain felt like it had a very loud pinball machine going at full speed inside my skull. "But, OMG, it's 100 degrees outside!", my brain screamed. Ping! Then, "OMG, she's dying and I need her to know that I fulfilled her last wishes". I contacted my neighbor to confirm that he wanted the equipment since he had shown interest in setting up a gourd rack this summer. He confirmed that he wanted it and would help me / her with whatever was required. We confirmed a date (last Saturday).

She sent me another message within a week and told me she was declining fast and almost bedridden and gave me her husband's phone number, in case she was gone by the time we could get there. I called him and he told me, "it's going to be so hot that day". I offered to come at a later date when it was cooler and he said, "no, I need it all gone". 

Ping, ping, PING. Finally resolving myself that we could just take frequent breaks and take it slow, we (my husband, neighbor & myself) figured out what tools we would need to dismantle everything and got up early Saturday to make the 2.5 hour trip to her house. When we arrived, it was already 90 degrees outside and blazing hot sun was beating down on us. My neighbor had brought his 16' trailer pulled by his pickup. Jane's husband, "John" walked over & introduced himself. As we previewed everything, he made comments as to the modifications she had made to her housing, the owl fencing, etc., and said, "she did a lot of this based on your recommendations". Ping....

We were stunned at the amount of bluebird houses (14) with poles & predator guards, and even more stunned by the quality (and quantity) of her purple martin systems - 1 Gemini and 1 Troyer Super System gourd rack, plus 4 other Troyer gourd rack systems (2") square poles and the pile of already-cleaned-out horizontal & vertical Troyer and S&K gourds. And 3 modified Trio aluminum houses. Every pole had a predator guard, snake netting. A wide variety of traps, including the Blaine's elevator trap. ReoLink cameras - new, not even removed from their packaging yet. Three storage bins marked, "PM stuff". A box with her handwritten note, "Trail Cameras - Kathy Freeze". Ping...my heart ached seeing her own handwriting. The heat wasn't helping.

I started trying to figure out where to start first. Luckily, my husband led the charge. He grabbed some wire cutters and went to the closest purple martin gourd rack and started clipping the zip ties that secured the fencing to her racks. Bazillions of zip ties....yes, bazillions. I told her husband, "they call me the Queen of Zip Ties on the purple martin forums, but now I see - I don't hold a candle to Jane...holy cow!". A little levity in a very sad setting. All 3 of us clipped & clipped and finally got rack #1 down. Moving on to rack #2. The sun felt like it was going to burn through my skin. My neighbor whispered to me, "this is a LOT more than I expected". Yeah, me too - all of it was overwhelming. Every bit of it....the sadness of the situation, the look in her husband's eyes, along with his soft demeanor as he told me, "This was her passion - she was out here all the time working with her birds". And I suddenly realized just how much she and I were really alike. Ping...

2 of the 14 bluebird houses

John told me she was bedridden now and wouldn't last much longer. Ping.. and here I was dismantling her passion just outside her front door....struggling with the extreme emotions of being happy that my neighbor was the beneficiary of such great, well-cared-for, quality equipment, proud that she had selected me to be the recipient to distribute the stuff, yet, so sad that these were the circumstances under which it had occurred. Adding to that, my thoughts turned to what would happen to my 'stuff' if this someday happened to me. I laughed (to myself) about how many zip ties someone would have to cut off my wire cages (a lot less than we cut off that day!!), how organized my stuff would be to pass on to someone else - (would it be stored in such nice bins?)...and started thinking about all the little odds & ends that someone would look at some day and wonder for what purpose I was keeping that broken piece of whatever.

Purple martin fledges

The purple martin community has lost a very lovely, passionate landlord as of this week. She took such great care of her purple martins, bluebirds and tree swallows. Next Spring, I'm going to complete my bluebird trail with Jane's bluebird boxes, complete with mounting poles and predator guards. I'm going to setup her new trail camera and every time it takes a picture, I'll think of her.  

When my neighbor puts up his Troyer gourd rack next year (he's going to pay the rest of the racks & houses forward to other potential wannabe landlords), it will make me proud to know that Jane's equipment is being put to excellent use by multiple new landlords.
John thanked us for taking it all down and hauling it away and their yard looked so barren as we left. I am still very emotional about all of this....because it has made me think of my own mortality and what happens in the aftermath of a landlord's passing. In the meantime, I'll try to be more strategic with my zip tie usage and not keep so many broken pieces & parts for, "just-in-case". Ping

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

Purple Martins: Winnowing-Natural and Unnatural

This Guest post was written by my good friend in Corpus Christi, Mr. John Barrow - purple martin landlord expert and all-around good-guy-extraordinaire. Thanks for sharing, John!

Winnowing Definition: (referring to a group of things, people, animals) to reduce something's size by separating the ones that are useful or relevant from the ones that are not. 

           I have been contemplating the effects of the post-fledge natural winnowing process on a colony this season and, I am becoming convinced that a great deal (or majority) of hatch year (HY) loss occurs in the week or two after fledging occurs.

          At my colony we had moderate drought in 2008, severe drought in 2009, and a banner year in 2010. In 2008 we had numerous jumpers--at one point we were rehabbing a dozen nestlings. In 2009, we had severe brood reduction due to weather related events--nearly all in the nature of fewer eggs produced; many that were not incubated. I recall we had only one jumper, but had 62 nest starts from 45 pairs. This year (2010) we had laying and incubation of large clutches of eggs, with only one jumper that was returned to fledge.

          Fledging each year, occurred in most cases over several days. That scenario, which is probably typical, results in separation of the family unit as adults take their new fledges to a presumably safe location and, starting individually, teach them to find and catch food. Prior to fledging adults have already reduced feeding of nestlings to encourage fledging, and as the post-fledging training occurs, those left in the nest lose weight, often to critical levels. This is what, in most instances absent mites, etc., I believe, causes jumpers. Not an easy problem to deal with. You can stuff the jumper with food and stick it back in the compartment you believe it belongs in. But that doesn't increase the feeding by its parents. These late fledges are really in a battle against time to get out of the nest, fly capably, and remain with their family group, in order to survive.

           Add to this other typical behavior like the adults returning to the cavities with newly fledged young--a form of post fledging memory stamping--and the ensuing confusion as these newly fledged young are attacked, chased and threatened when trying to reenter what is often someone else's turf, you almost certainly have more family unit separation and confusion.

          There has been little study done of the effects of this post fledge winnowing period, and I suspect study would be difficult and for the most part subjective. But it is something I have been reflecting on. Did my adult pairs of martins that fledged 3 young/per pair in 2009, and were probably better equipped to train that lesser number and keep the family unit intact, have a substantially lesser effect on the overall population, then those pairs in 2010 that fledged 6 or 7 per nest; but, that had more difficulty in training the individual fledges, locating and preserving a safe and secure locale for staging that provided a reliable food source; and finally, in keeping the entire family unit intact for the requisite training period to allow the young to become independent? I think there are signals that the overall population fluctuation of a certain area in a good year, may not be significantly different than in a marginal year.

          What does it matter? Assuming there are substantial losses during this post fledging period, what can be done to reduce it? Winnowing in this light is defined as reducing the number of birds in a species until only the best ones are left. It is natural selection at its purest.

          It is not maintaining a colony so large that it becomes a magnet for predators, not only endangering adults during the nesting process, but more so, becoming an attack zone for recently fledged hatch year birds whose survival is dependent on their having a safe and secure training area to learn basic survival skills as part of a family unit. It is not offering housing that serves to maximize the confusion of family units returning to housing as part of post fledging memory stamping at the colony, be it housing that is too closely configured, or stacked row on top of row; it is not building a colony of the size or in an area beyond the capacity of the immediate food supply.

Purple Martin Arrivals - 2020 Season Begins and Prenesting Gourds

My bluebirds are a bunch of Divas. For about 5 months of each year, they pretty much have this whole 23 acres, along with 14 nestboxes to themselves. But when the first Tree Swallows arrive in Spring, the bluebirds become a bunch of whiny babies and fly from nestbox-to-nestbox, trying to dominate each one and bully the Tree Swallows away from *their* site.
My friend Jeff in Rogersville, Keith in Ava and myself always have a small competition going each year regarding who will get their martins back first. On Saturday, Feb. 29th, I had already rolled out 2 gourds since I just *KNEW* all three of us would be getting our martins back on the same day. It was a classic weather pattern for my arrivals - winds from the south and 60 degrees.
When I searched the skies first thing in the morning, the first tell tale sign was a little teal-colored, "orca of the skies" zooming around my backyard. In years past, my tree swallows have always been the first to arrive here on Gobbler's Knob, usually followed closely by a purple martin...or three.

Several of us that host tree swallows along with purple martins have nicknamed them "Orcas of the Skies"; one obvious reason is their coloring, but the biggest reason is how ferocious and brave these little birds can be when a hawk enters their territory. They are fierce and are a great bird to host along with purple martins - all they need is a nest box - similar to a bluebird's nestbox.
By Sunday, I still had no martins, so I checked the Purple Martin forum and found that Jeff and Keith BOTH had received several martins on Saturday already. I guess my purple martins are going to be slackers this year. Probably hanging out in Sikeston at Lambert's - "Home of the Throwed Roll", thinking they really meant, "Home of the Throwed Crickets".
With the weather still looking warm for last week though, I decided to go ahead and put out a few more gourds.
Since I get a lot of questions about pre-nesting gourds, I decided to make a short video to show how I do it. Please note - I use only gourds, but you can also pre-nest any housing that you provide.
It not only helps keep the martins warm by providing some insulation when they arrive in early March, it also gives your gourds / housing a more "lived-in" look and will help attract new martins, since they are "secondary cavity-nesters". Click here to read more about the tradition shift in their nesting habits.
Pre-nesting also ensures there's enough nesting material in the bottom of your housing to prevent the birds from slipping around on the flooring as well as preventing 'splayed-leg' syndrome in the nestlings.

Materials to NOT use:
- Do NOT use cedar chips / shavings. While they are purported to repel insects, they also absorb a lot of water and a wet nest is just as deadly to nestlings as are too many mites, etc.
- Do NOT use green grass - it has too much moisture in it and it will mold & rot in the nest.

Recommended Materials:
- Eastern White Pine needles - they 'shed' water and don't absorb it.
- Corn fodder -  some landlords that live near corn fields have reported their martins using this for their nesting materials. It also sheds water
- Straw - use only dry straw

Here's a video I made this past weekend, while waiting for my purple martin arrivals:

An ASY male martin did arrive at my site on Saturday, March 7th. That purple dot right in the middle of the Mark Twain National Forest - that's me - in the picture below.  You can report your arrivals too, to the Purple Martin Scout Arrival Study linked here:

Get ready - the purple martins are coming!  If you're a new landlord this year, you still have about 4-6 weeks to get ready, so don't panic. Obviously, the sooner the better - you want to do it right the first time!


 

A Summer of Purple Martins and Flowers

With all the rain we've had this year, the purple martins' nestlings have been feasting on dragonflies galore. Fledging began here on Thursday, June 20th with 2 nests and as of now, June 30th, about half of my nests have fledged. I had 79 pair this year (up from 76 pair last year) and currently 71 of those nests contain 313 young. That means there are approximately ~150 new fledges and 158 adults (~308 birds from my colony) filling the skies around Gobbler's Knob....and slaughtering every insect in sight. This year I will have 8 late nests - most of them hatching now and over the next couple of days, meaning they won't fledge until the end of July / early August.
My colony is 13 years old this year. This is the first season, since my 3rd or 4th year, where over half my pairs are sub-adults. It's as if there has been a 'changing of the guard' this year. While my number of pairs is up from last year, the number of young that have hatched and survived is lower and I attribute that to the much 'younger/ more inexperienced" sub-adults that I have this year. Along with that change, has come the inevitable passing down of the message, "hey, did you know there's also a Great Horned Owl that lives here?"  Yes, she's still here....and she has caught at least 10 adult martins this year and now, with so many new fledges returning at night, we're moving to DEFCON 1 and many sleepless nights until our season ends.
This is a mid-day video of my colony with approximately half the adults still feeding their young during the day.
[After clicking on the video, you can then click on the YouTube link and go to full screen for the HD version].

Below is a video of 300+ purple martins coming home in the waning sunlight. The chaos caused by over 150 new fledges not knowing to which gourd they should return is pretty hilarious. The ruckus heals my heart and makes all the pain, sweat & tears of the season just melt away. Maybe that's the way nature intended it? Ending the year with this kind of party always gives me a sense of accomplishment and renewed hope. Pretty fantastic and fun!

For the first time in our 13 years of hosting Tree Swallows, they are all producing a second brood this year. So unusual - but I'm happy about that! Normally, they've left by now and aren't around to help with the hawks that start trying to take the martin fledges, but this year, the little "Orcas" are helping out and I'm loving it!
The purple martins are not the only ones who have benefited from all the rain this year. Our native wildflower field has been bustin' loose too! We have had way more coneflowers this year. And while the 'Queen Anne's Lace' is a native, it is really annoying because it too has benefited from the excessive rain and is blocking the view of some of the other natives. Nevertheless, we are thrilled with the amount of flowers and abundance of insects they're currently attracting.
This is a video from 3 different viewpoints of our most-mature native wildflower field. I love the variety and how there is always something in bloom here. I didn't realize until after I had already processed the video, that I still had 'image-stabilization' turned on for my camera, so some of the video will blur a little bit, but as I pause in various places it does clear up. I have had this video camera for several years and I still can't figure out how half the crap that I really don't need, gets turned on!!  Bummer - definitely need to practice more with that! 

I have a St. John's Wort bush in my landscape bed that has been spreading all kinds of fertile seed and I can't keep up with pulling all the small shoots that are coming up. Soooooo, if you want a St. John's Wort bush or some seed, contact me! I'll let you have all you want - but you have to dig it out. Ha!  The bonus is that the bumblebees absolutely LOVE St. John's Wort. It's hard to get a good video of the bumblebees because they move so quickly - but in this video, you can see the prolific blooms on the St. John's Wort too.

Lastly, a quick tour of our savanna area - scattered oak trees with broken sunlight. We planted this area in December 2014 with the Native wildflower mix from Hamilton Native Outpost called, "Shadows & Sunbeams". This is its 5th season and it is absolutely beautiful. The birds are now scattering the grey-headed coneflower seeds and the plants are coming up all around the property.
Come with me and take a tour of my favorite spot.

QUIZ TIME! If you watched all five of my videos on this blogpost, you will find that three of them have at least 2, maybe 3 bird calls in common. Can you name them?

MDC-Sponsored Purple Martin Event - March 9, 2019

John Miller, St. Louis - Forest Park Purple martin landlord & mentor, worked very hard and long to convince the MDC to host a purple martin event at their Conservation Center in Springfield for this past Saturday. He even coordinated with the Springfield News Leader to do a story about the event in advance to generate more interest. So, when he emailed me to let me know he had suffered a back injury and asked me to take his place, I thought he was surely kidding me. He had worked so hard for this...but he wasn't kidding and on Saturday, myself and Jeff Robinson, purple martin landlord and mentor from Rogersville, MO, took the stage in Springfield and, along with the MDC, we led 68 purple martin enthusiasts down the path to learning more about how to be a purple martin landlord.
We learned from a showing of hands that only about 20% of the folks there were already purple martin landlords. That means approximately 54 new landlords are now spreading out across western Missouri on their way to putting up new houses for purple martins!
Two and a half hours later, my voice was nearly gone, and Jeff and I were still fielding questions.
It was a great turnout!  Thank you to John Miller for providing Jeff and I with this opportunity and to the MDC for hosting this event! 
Following are all the pictures from the event: