One of my favorite pictures of the 2019 season. This was taken only a couple days before fledging. My last birds fledged on the last day of July. As I write this, on September 14, 2019, I still have one Martin that returns every evening to roost. It returns punctually at 8 pm or just before always roosting in either ChirpyNest cavity # 13, 14 or 15 on pole F. All other housing has been cleaned and put up for the season. I have left this pole intact to accommodate my nightly tenant. When she (or he if it is a fledgling male from this year), does leave I hope it travels with the barn swallows that remain or maybe there are other martins that it spends the days with.
Taken late in the season, my son Zachary captured this great shot of a young one being fed in an extra vertical ChirpyNest. At the time only two other cavities had young and fledging took place two days later.
Overall the 2019 Martin season was a huge success. My colony increased form 176 young from 49 cavities in 2018 to 211 young from 57 cavities in 2019. This despite nightly owl visits. My resident owl(s) will hunt and dine from atop my Martin poles. With the ChirpyNest, if the owl strikes, I firmly believe my birds are staying put in the deep slanted cavity. Any birds that are outside late are vulnerable to attack but I have in fact built my colony back from a devastating decline after developing ChirpyNest.
This year I replaced all plastic gourds with ChirpyNest. This move resulted in zero jumpers at my site. It was a joy to not find young martins on the ground at the pre fledging age. ( I did have one incidence of a 4 or five day old on the ground under pole H and a 15-18 day old on the ground from pole F. The occurrence of this on the same afternoon makes me think it was the doings of an unattached male juvenile .) ChirpyNest is a very well ventilated cavity and the temperature does not vary far from the air temperature. I have spent the last five months doing a temperature study that convinces me that heat and ventilation is a factor with jumpers. From the data and observations Ive gathered , plastic gourds such as the Troyer horizontals and super gourds which are of high quality, heat up when the sun hits them and remain many degree higher than the outside air during the day. I can only imagine how hot thin, lower quality plastic gourds can get. I am finishing up the gathering of this temperature data and will post separately about this.
My other colony at the Virginia Highlands Community College statistically had an even more productive season than mine. I did observe a resident coopers hawk at this site this year. From the numbers, I don’t think it had a negative effect on the season but I imagine there were fledglings that became victims after leaving the nest. Observation is about the only way to know its effect for sure but I am not there enough to find this out.
Here are links to the 2019 martinwath data for my home site and the VHCC site for my coloniesas well as summaries for the last 5 years of these colonies. I have also updated my colony history with the 24 year colony summary. These links are also available from the navigation bar under colony data and research.
For the 2020 season I will have 250 ChirpyNest available for sale and I have developed a new locking tab for the door. Order early or at least let me know you want some so that I can reserve yours.