Although winter still has a few more weeks to go before the official beginning of spring, the arrival of my first Martin can happen any day now. Four of the last five years my first arrival has been between march 1st and 5th. The weather is not the best for early arrivals and the week ahead is forecast to be highs in the thirties and lows in the low twenties. Hopefully the martins will stay south at least until this cold snap passes but I have seen them arrive with ice hanging from the housing.

The first birds, or scouts, are easy to miss if I am not outside during morning hours or at the end of the day. The majority of the day the birds are out and about the area feeding.

I have my houses up , pre-nested and ready to go as of last weekend. I still need to put the housing up at the Virginia Highlands Community College site and will take care of that this coming week.

Many new landlords are incorporating ChirpyNest for the 2019 season, including the Cavity Nester Conservancy in Texas and Johnson’s Worlds largest purple Martin colony in Alabama. Both sites will have large number of ChirpyNest along with plastic gourds and will be a good comparison opportunity to study attractiveness to the martins and ease of use by the landlords.

My Peaceful Valley Purple Martin colony for 2019 includes 7 housing poles with a total of 134 cavities. Retired this year is one of my first houses, a converted 4 compartment old trio house that typically had 4 cavities hanging underneath.