Read Well, Landlords!

Predation by Purple Martin enemies can result in Complete Abandonment...Forever!! 

• RACCOONS, OPOSSUMS, ETC. CAN CLIMB METAL POLES!

Despite what you have thought in the past or what someone tells you, raccoons, opossums, snakes, rats, squirrels (including flying squirrels), chipmunks all can climb or access metal poles. I can tell you horror stories regarding this. In such instances, martin landlords lose their colonies of martins not only for the season but, many times, forever. This is because martin landlords do not realize there is a responsibility to protect their martins from their enemies. When we place our martin housing in the most open part of our yards, and the martins like it this way, we are setting the martins up to predation by their many enemies. The martins, like all living creatures, have a strong instinct to live and survive. If they live to survive these attempts, they simply do not return to colony sites where there has been predation or predation attempts. Landlords in such situations must begin from "martin square one" in their attempt to attract martins back to such sites. In their renewed attempt, they must definitely provide a ground climbing predator guard on the bottom of the martin houses. Hopefully, they would have learned a valuable but sad and unfortunate lesson.

• SIGNS OF GROUND-CLIMBING PREDATORS.

Sure signs of ground climbing predators are scratch marks on wooden poles. Definite signs are pieces/parts of martins laying about, usually wings and heads. Typical modus operandi of raccoons is to bite off the heads and wings and only eat the bodies of the martins.

• GROUND-CLIMBING PREDATOR GUARDS.

Currently, there are three types of predator guards for martin house or gourd poles: metal cones with a diameter of 36-40 inch, stovepipe baffle or the commercially available Top Guard Animal Barrier.

Personally, I cannot recommend the Top-Guard for anyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line. While these are effective guards against mammals, they are not adequate against very muscular tree-climbing snakes like the Rat Snakes, also known as Bull, Corn, Chicken, Black, Fox and Ring snakes. Snakes can and do circumnavigate the Top Guard Animal Barriers and do get to the martins. Rat Snakes are also native to the Northern areas, but do not seem to live in residential areas. I consider the Top Guard to be effective for those who are north of the more snake areas of the country (south of the Mason-Dixon Line).

• ADVISORY:  If you have made an investment in the martins and the martin interest, you should have insurance that your martin colony is protected.  A predator guard on your martin house pole is the insurance. This is vital. Without a guard, you are setting your martins up for predation and death. Death, not only to your birds, but also to your colony for the future.

Ground Climbing Predator Guards are your insurance for your birds’ lives for the future! Do not risk your birds’ lives or the future of your colony by not having a guard on your pole. If you slip one season, you may never have Purple Martins again in your backyard. Martins, like any other living creature, have a strong desire to live and will not typically return to colonies where they have survived a predator attack in a past season.

A long-time, senior PM landlord in our area had over 110 pairs at his colony site well over a decade. Unfortunately, he never used a ground-climbing predator guard on any of his martin house poles. He thought axle-greasing the poles along with his constant vigil with his birds was enough protection. In May, 1992, a raccoon made two nightly forays to this landlord's 8 ft. fenced-in colony site. The first night, the raccoon took 11 martins. The second night, the raccoon took 8 more. The evidence was there. Heads, wings and blood everywhere! Can you imagine the terror of these martins as the raccoon raided the houses, systematically, one by one? Twenty-one birds in total but the real total loss would be the entire colony of birds.

It was the beginning of the season ,and some adult pairs were on eggs, and few, if any, of the subadults had arrived yet. Fifty martins immediately left the colony site. Those few pairs that remained had eggs and stayed the season. In 1993, the landlord did not have a single pair return to nest at his site.Or in '95 or '96. The landlord passed away in 1997, never to see his birds return to the colony to nest again.

It was very sad for all of us to see this happen. I always felt that this landlord shed tears over his colony lost. His birds were his whole life.

No birds  ever returned  from the 110 pair colony! Remember that!

Martins have the same instinct to survive as we humans have. In addition to their instinct to survive, they have a strong instinct to reproduce successfully and will not return to a site where they perceive to be dangerous or unproductive for them.

And we call them birdbrains! The real birdbrains are those landlords who do not protect their birds!  

• PREDATION BY GREAT HORNED OWLS. 

Most martin landlords do not know that the Great Horned Owl (GHO) is the #1 predator of their martins in the summer. And many landlords do not know that the GHOs can be the cause of complete abandonment at their martin colonies and the reason martins, that survive such owl attacks, do not return to those colony sites.

GHOs are lean, mean predator machines! These birds of prey are equipped by Nature with excellent night vision, hearing and specialized silent flight feathers. Their feathers are unlike all other birds. Instead of the wind whistling through their feathers, air passes silently. So. when the owls strike, the prey never knows what hit them. They never hear
the owl coming for them.

Barred Owl The typical method of operation for the GHOs or Barred Owls is to come at nighttime when landlords are naturally sleeping. The great birds perch on top of the martin houses and beat the houses with their wings in hopes that the martins will become rattled and flee from their compartment holes and into the owl’s death clutches.

• SIGNS OF OWL PREDATION

On martin houses with individual doors, the doors will be either ajar or completely off the house. There may be feathers from martins or owls, or both, about the yard in the area of the house or gourds.

• LANDLORD ETHICS

"Those PM landlords who do not hold to a code of Purple Martin ethics tarnishes the entire interest for all of us! Those who fanatically specialize in Purple Martins, protecting the species to the detriment of other protected bird and mammal species blackens the eye of our interest. We do not want it to be known that Purple Martin landlords are bird killers! We are wildlife conservationist at heart, not wildlife terrorists."

Remember! Owls and all other birds of prey are protected by state and federal wildlife laws. Infractions of these laws can result in many years’ imprisonment and/or $5,000 fines.

While we are at liberty to dispose of House Sparrows and European Starlings because they are not protected by any wildlife laws, we are not free to deal with owls, or birds of prey, in the same way. While, legally,  we are permitted to dispose of European Starlings and House Sparrows, we must do so quickly and humanely.

Consider! Birds of prey are natural, ethical hunters. They only kill what they eat. They do not take joy in taking another bird's life. They never waste their kills. According to the laws of Nature, there is no senselessness in the killing of their prey.