Terry Suchma
03-05-2007, 11:43 AM
From Bill Dietrich of The Purple Martin Society of Collier County (FL):
At the nest check of Sunday, March 4, 2007 at my demonstration housing site at the Collier County (Florida) Extension Service, there was one purple martin egg in one compartment. I strongly suspect that this will be the earliest egg-laying date in North America for purple martins in 2007. As had been the case the last four years, the first egg was laid in a Nature Unlimited Green Roof 4-Way house.
I didn't arrive at the site until about 11:00 a.m on Feb. 28 and found Mr. & Mrs. Williams from Tennessee who had been watching the martins for two hours and said that they were carrying in a lot of nesting material and one particular female was carrying in mud to the compartment closest to where they were seated. I told them I couldn't believe that since I hadn't had mud in compartments for years since all units were large gourds or double compartments. We lowered the T-14 and, sure enough, there was mud in the compartment. It was not strategically placed nor did it seem to serve any purpose but there was mud. We went on to check all other compartments at the site and found many nests being built including more than a dozen with varying amounts of mud. Maybe they use mud in the Chinese Year of the Pig??? Because of the activity I decided it would be best to do another nest check on March 4. (This is the only day of the year that is an order: March Forth!). While there was only one egg in one nest, there were many other nests obviously ready to have eggs laid. It will be interesting to see what happens on the next check on March 7 since there was a cold front that came through Saturday night and we are supposed to have termperatures dipping into the low 40's the next two nights with daytime highs reaching only the low 70's. By Wednesday we should be in the high 70's and we're back into the 80's by the weekend. If the "cold" weather doesn't slow down the egg laying we could have many active nests withing the next week.
Bill
At the nest check of Sunday, March 4, 2007 at my demonstration housing site at the Collier County (Florida) Extension Service, there was one purple martin egg in one compartment. I strongly suspect that this will be the earliest egg-laying date in North America for purple martins in 2007. As had been the case the last four years, the first egg was laid in a Nature Unlimited Green Roof 4-Way house.
I didn't arrive at the site until about 11:00 a.m on Feb. 28 and found Mr. & Mrs. Williams from Tennessee who had been watching the martins for two hours and said that they were carrying in a lot of nesting material and one particular female was carrying in mud to the compartment closest to where they were seated. I told them I couldn't believe that since I hadn't had mud in compartments for years since all units were large gourds or double compartments. We lowered the T-14 and, sure enough, there was mud in the compartment. It was not strategically placed nor did it seem to serve any purpose but there was mud. We went on to check all other compartments at the site and found many nests being built including more than a dozen with varying amounts of mud. Maybe they use mud in the Chinese Year of the Pig??? Because of the activity I decided it would be best to do another nest check on March 4. (This is the only day of the year that is an order: March Forth!). While there was only one egg in one nest, there were many other nests obviously ready to have eggs laid. It will be interesting to see what happens on the next check on March 7 since there was a cold front that came through Saturday night and we are supposed to have termperatures dipping into the low 40's the next two nights with daytime highs reaching only the low 70's. By Wednesday we should be in the high 70's and we're back into the 80's by the weekend. If the "cold" weather doesn't slow down the egg laying we could have many active nests withing the next week.
Bill