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!


 

For New Visitors to This Site

Since the Rural Missouri magazine article has been published, I'm creating this post with links to some of the articles I've written for new or hopeful purple martin landords.

You may find these articles helpful:

Attraction Techniques for New Sites: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2014/03/attraction-techniques-for-new-sites.html

Dealing with English House Sparrows and Starlings - Trapping & Shooting Techniques: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2015/02/trapping-and-shooting-strategies-for.html

English House Sparrow Control Myths:  https://www.purplemartin.org/uploads/media/22-3-housesparrowmyt-415.pdf

Offering Calcium to Purple Martins and Other Birds: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-incredible-edible-egg-shell.html 

Stopping Ground Predators from Killing Your Purple Martins:  https://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2020/04/predator-guards-story-of-love-and.html

Feed the Bees: Because You Can Never Have Enough Wildflowers

Last November I shared some pictures of the area we were planning to convert to all native wildflowers & grasses (Link here: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2019/11/tell-it-to-trees.html).  Bob ran over this area several times with a disc to help kill the grass, but with our Yellowstone vacation and other activities, we weren't able to spread the seed during December or January as originally planned.
Realizing we were running out of time, we started watching the weather at the beginning of this week, and finally decided that today - if the ground had frozen hard enough that we didn't sink up to our knees in mud - we would finally hand-spread it all. This area was just too small and cluttered with trees to try to use a seed drill.
Yesterday, we found some vermiculite at Menards in Rolla, MO that was perfect to mix with all the seeds so that we could get a more even distribution when flinging the seed.  An added benefit of adding that stuff - it also helps you see where you've already spread seed as you walk through the field.

Vermiculite, ready to be mixed in with the seeds.

 Over 6 pounds of seed to spread - and when you consider how small some of the seeds are, that's a lot of seed!

Bob 'flinging' seed.

The freezing & thawing process, along with the snow, ice & rain over the next month will not only help stratify the seeds, but also naturally "plant" them, just as nature does it when left to Her own devices.
One Bonus - with a resident Great Horned Owl and Barred Owl, there won't be a lot of mice trying to steal the seed. At least, there won't be a lot of mice that get away with it anyway in this wide-open area! HA!

A panoramic view of 1/2 of the field we planted.

Tell it to the Trees

I often catch a lot of grief on the purple martin Facebook sites for my suggestions to struggling landlords to cut down a single or even multiple trees. Some "environmentalists" take my suggestions to cut down a tree as 'flippant', cavalier and careless. Rest-assured, I do not take those suggestions lightly - especially when it comes to my own property. It actually breaks my heart to have to cut down a tree.

Nevertheless, we have lots of cedar trees - really old cedar trees -- on our property that need to go (for a variety of reasons). Regardless of the fact that I'm allergic to them, I've always admired their beauty and resisted the urge to give the greenlight to Mr. Freeze to cut them down. All this to say, the decision to take out these 2 cedar trees this past weekend have been a subject of much emotional debate for about 5 years now.

The large cedar in the foreground and the 2 to the right in the background were targeted for eradication.

The largest cedar on the left was consistently used by hawks to launch surprise attacks on my purple martin colony.

Three trees were originally on the chopping block, but after taking down 2 of them, my heart couldn't take anymore, so I asked my “Paul Bunyan” to stop and we compromised with a very aggressive limb trimming for the third tree. For the last few years a resident Sharpie and later a Cooper's hawk have both taken advantage of the cover that these large cedars provided, and launched surprise attacks on my colony.
Eventually, maybe...some other day the third tree will go down too after I've had time to heal and assess, but not today.

Cedar tree providing cover for the hawks is gone.

View from the gourd racks - another 100' of visibility.

The hawks' approach has been pushed back another 100 feet. She will now have to cross this clearing to attack and she will surely be spotted.

The far right cedar tree got a reprieve and only received an aggressive limb trimming.

As a way to comfort myself after cutting a tree down, Bob and I either find a ‘volunteer’ (a small tree sapling of a desirable variety) or plant more trees in a better location than the one we removed.
A lot of dire information about climate change has been on the news lately, along with some very cost effective measures to counter it – as in, plant a tree! I did some research this week and it turns out that incidentally, Bob and I have been planting the *best* trees that also help sequester the most carbon.  
Eastern white pine trees, sycamores, hickory trees, poplars, silver maples and a few other species, according to this website (among many) that I’ve read:  https://www.thoughtco.com/which-trees-offset-global-warming-1204209    and:
This site: https://www.americanarborists.net/tree-tips/2017/july/what-trees-are-best-suited-for-the-changing-clim/
“Fast-growing trees with large crowns”, they say.
Trees that are too crowded do not do well either - regardless of their age. They won't spread their branches when a tree is overcrowding them, therefore reducing the amount of leaves they grow. Cutting down their neighbors and planting a replacement in another area will provide much more benefit to the environment and the climate, than overcrowding your stand.

Oaks to the south of the cedars provide mottled shade. Lower limbs are kept trimmed up high to encourage growth.

But we have multiple goals here on Gobbler’s Knob and when multiple goals can be accomplished with minimal effort, that’s even sweeter. We've been planning for over 2 years to plant this area (approx. an acre) with native wildflowers and grasses and I could hardly contain myself when I ordered my seed from Hamilton Native Outpost yesterday.  We've killed the fescue growing here and Bob has been discing the ground over & over to ensure everything is dead.
The Shadows and Sunbeams mix did so well in our western extended Savanna, that I'm ordering more of it for the large oak-shaded areas. And the oaks in the above pictures provide the perfect amount of shade for this mix.

The Shadows and Sunbeams mix in my 'eastern Savanna'

Some of the cedar trees we have removed have been replaced with much nicer trees. Swamp white oaks are one of our favorites.

 

 

 

 

2 Swamp white oaks planted 8 or 9 years ago.

This hickory tree was a 'volunteer' and after much expert trimming by Mr. Freeze, it has now chosen a primary and is starting to grow rather quickly. It received a lower limb-trimming this past weekend to encourage more top-growth.

Hickory Tree

This plum grove (below) consists of over 40 trees. We planted them as small saplings that we purchased from the George White nursery in 2008. I remember crawling around on my knees to cut down the large ragweed that grew up around the small saplings, threatening to choke them out. Now, they're spreading and stronger than ever.

We planted 3 -"Mighty Moe" (poplar) trees in 2012. The purple martins love to use the new leaves out of the tops each year to line their nests. The purple martins stripping out the leaves are a large part of the reason the trees struggle to grow each year. Mr. Freeze walks by and (jokingly) tells them each year, "get outta my poplar trees, or I'm gonna get the shotgun". hehehe! They're not skeered.

2 large poplars. There were 3, but my neighbor got drunk one night and ran one of them over. The purple martins love to pick their new leaves.

 We planted this river birch (and several others around the property) around 2009 or so. We needed it mainly for shade, but I love the multi-colored trunk shavings that peel off the trunk. They are so beautiful. Now if the limbs would just quit drooping down! It really loves the water runoff from the house and is growing exponentially every year!

This "Shingle Oak" was another volunteer. It has received some 'trimming love' from my expert arborist, Mr. Freeze.

Shingle Oak (also known as "Water Oak")

Another Swamp White Oak -obviously, the ground is not as favorable for this tree as in other spots, but eventually, it will be a beautiful tree.

One of my favorite Swamp White Oaks that we planted along our driveway. Mr. Freeze gives it a lot of love.

 This picture and the second sycamore tree below are my favorite trees. They were both 'volunteers' and have grown so fast that I'm afraid to get caught up in their vortex each time I walk by. During late summer, it is such a hoot to stand under them and listen to the cicadas 'singing'. And they drop so many seeds. I have 3 of them now.

Sycamore #1 - approx. 14 years old

Sycamore #2 - approx. 14 years old

These Eastern white pine trees were planted in April, 2010.

Check them out now. 

 We planted more of them at the end of our driveway.

The same trees today: 

The George White nursery here in Missouri is wonderful - carrying all the native trees for Missouri in very cost-effective bundles. I encourage everyone to order or visit this nursery and see what a great job they do with providing Missourians with a wide variety of trees and shrubs (check out their chokeberries!).  Seriously, how cool is that??

Purple Martin Housing Cleanup - 2019

At the end of every season, I always dread the inevitable cleanup. I watch other landlords post that they either don't take their gourds down nor do they remove the nests; OR they take them down, pull out the old nests and just store them (no washing).
Me? I can't stand the idea of a mite outbreak one day next spring as the weather is warming, right when I'm pulling the gourds out of storage.  So - somewhat reluctantly, after the first freeze in the fall, I find some teenagers that are willing to do the hard work and we embark on the housekeeping duties. After watching the weather reports, I haul all my cleaning equipment out - the scrubbing brushes, the 'greenies', vinyl gloves, heavier dish-washing gloves and 4 gallons of bleach.
Yesterday, November 3rd, happened to be the 'perfect' day, so by 11 AM, we were ready - 96 gourds and 96 lids.
I still only offer 84 gourds, but now, after a landlord retired his racks & gourds last year, I have extra gourds - they really help with the nest checks / changes!
I always hate the part where the old nests have to be removed, so while I pull the gourds off the racks, the young lady and the two gentleman that came this year emptied them. "EEwwwwwww, here's a dead bird", or "uggghhh, I cracked an egg, OMG - that's GROSS"!, cracked me up as we moved across the three racks.
Luckily, those comments were few & far between and evenly spread between the three gourd racks....verifying that I had no serious owl predation the last month of the season. Whew!
Over the years of doing this, I've developed a system and some handy tools - mainly from The Dollar Store - lots of brush varieties and scrubbers. The most handy tool is this "wine bottle washer" that my husband found a few years ago.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Buon-Vino-Spray-Wand/112366978?fbclid=IwAR2CSIncgnffn0A-wYo60ywFOT8dbUft4z1UR3s84_xKeAE3fCN0GGIoo3M

It's a little more expensive now (5 years later), but WORTH.EVERY.PENNY!  After emptying the gourds of all nest contents, I rinse them out with this sprayer.  Water comes out the tip in a 360 degree circle as well as straight out the end of the tip too, so yeah, you get wet. After the initial rinse, they go into the large tub (the largest Rubbermaid tub I could find) where they soak in the 10% bleach solution for about 10 minutes.

The worker bees then begin to scrub off everything they can.  As we worked yesterday, the 2 young men gave the young lady quite a hard time. The 3 of them were really cranking and when I told them that, the guys snarked and said, "well, we're really only 2 and a half". LOL So, I replied back, "Yeah, but she's doing FIVE jobs and you guys only have ONE!". Yes, she's small, but she's a little firecracker. Gotta stand up for the girl on my team!
As they washed, we would hang the gourds on these arms where I do the final rinse with my magic wand.

By then, everything is loose and rinses out really well...or well enough at least, for my tastes.
We pile them on the trailer, wait a day or two for them to dry, then Bob and I bag them up in the large leaf bags you can buy at Walmart.  Safe & sound - and NO MITES - until next year. This has kept my gourds in excellent shape and some of them (the horizontals) are over 11 years old.
Another tip - other than paying the teenagers well (so they'll come back next year, despite the nasty work), feed them well too! Dr. Pepper, summer sausage, string cheese, variety of chips and water.....
I no longer have to worry about getting too old to handle all this ... turns out, there are some great parents raising some great kids around my area that are always willing to work. I am indeed, very fortunate.

Thank you, Brenda - you have some awesome children!
Thank you, Carly, Jayden & Jay - you guys rock!! (I hope you guys still want to come back next year ....even if you're really sore today).

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?

Purple Martin Sub-Adults Arrive in Missouri

It seems that I finished getting my new rack up just in time. This year, to better protect my martins and make my nest checks easier, I've replaced my two Deluxe Gourd racks with a third Super System gourd rack. With drilling four extra holes on each of the Super System racks, I'm able to have 28 gourds on each system, maintaining my 84-gourd colony.
I'm thrilled that I'm not only going to be able to more easily do nest checks this year, but I also won't be fighting with the owl cages and donating a quart of blood every time I do a nest check!  So far, things have been very quiet where the Great Horned Owl has been concerned. No signs of feathers or attacks yet.
On Saturday, May 4th, I was able to identify my first sub-adult male arrival for the 2019 season.

Last night, just as the last of the light was fading away, a fast-flying group of martins circled my site three times. They were tightly grouped and all their bellies were very white. I laughed as I suddenly realized they were a gang of sub-adults, coming in like gangbusters - they folded their wings and dove into my colony. They tumbled through the openings in the cages and proceeded to perch on the gourd arms.
They must have thought they would really impress the girls, arriving like a gang of thugs - reminded me of this scene from Grease 2:

All thirteen of them were sub-adults and they acted like they didn't have an established gourd yet, indicating they must have migrated & arrived here yesterday. It became very noisy in the gourds as the light dimmed and I could barely make them out trying to enter the already-occupied gourds.

Sub-adult arrivals, with a couple of ASY bachelor males.

Today, as dawn arrived and the rain continued, making it a cold, wet miserable day for humans and avian alike, I was able to see that indeed, I now have a lot of sub-adults on-board....that are getting ready to wreck chaos here on Gobbler's Knob.

Free showers today. May sub-adult arrivals.

 There were definite advantages to the timing of their arrivals though.

May sub-adult arrivals.

With the weather being incredibly cold and rainy today, some of my "old-timers" who knew the routine when this weather arrived, decided to let me know today that it was time for the eggs and crickets to be served.
Thinking it was a good training opportunity for the new SY arrivals to learn how the diner works here on Gobbler's Knob, I took advantage, thawed some crickets and cooked some eggs.
After some refresher flipping training, I dumped everything on my tray and called them to the trough. In a "monkey-see, monkey-do" fashion, some of the SYs landed with the adults and watched them as they gobbled down the food.

Note the little SY female to the far left.

This little SY female was especially curious and very smart. At first, she tried to steal the food from the ASY female on the right. She knew whatever was going on was a good thing, but she didn't quite understand it yet. But she watched closely and studied hard.

She watched the ASY female closely.

 After 10 minutes of watching and unable to steal the food from the ASYs, the little female decided to give it a try. I was thrilled! She will remember this routine now.

Finally, she tried it out.

A few minutes later an SY male (left of her) arrived. I'm not sure if he is HER mate, but he watched her intently and I'm sure she'll teach him the ropes. If he's nice to her that is.

SY male and SY female learning how to eat at the feeding tray.

Bob said, "you know they all probably ate yesterday, right? Now they're just being little freeloaders". "Yes," I told him, "but I never pass up a training opportunity". And sure enough it paid off.
Hoping for much better weather in the coming days - for my birds and my bees.
I saw this raccoon today toddling across my yard at 2:30 PM. His/her home must be flooded out for him to come out like this. I let him/her pass as I felt kinda sorry for it.

I have no idea yet how many purple martin eggs I have, as my yard seems to be knee-deep in water & mud. We need a break - soon.