March 6th. While cleaning yard two purple martin scouts visited our martin houses in Hamilton- Oxford area in Ohio.
Purple Martin scouts
Wow that's great Boz!
Ahh, spring is in the air!
That's great news for you, Bozarrow! DH built a Martin 'condo,' but we haven't had any takers. Hopefully, this year will be different. He's going to put up some gourds, too. Hopefully, that will do the trick.
I'm keeping an eye/ear out for them, also. I put up a martin box for the first time last year but no takers. I had one check it out but they never moved in. It seems that the martins in my area prefer plain wooden nesting boxes. I may add some gourds to see if that improves my chances any but if not, next year I will have my DH build me a plain ol' wooden one and see what happens.
Put up a martin house a few years ago and had my first family last year. It's fun to see them sitting on top of their house each spring and hearing their distinct sound. You go outside one day in the spring and see them flying around or perched on the roof of the martin house looking around. How exciting is that..........!!!!!! I do need to clean mine out now and get it scrubbed up.Those sparrows are constantly trying to take over.
Cuckoo
We let our neighbor put white gourds up on our pole, last year, as it sits almost on
our adjacent property lines in the back lawn. They moved in them readily, last year,
and, this afternoon, I saw scouts checking them out!
Great! 'Skeeter eaters are moving in already! I wish I had enough open ground for them, they don't like forests too well...
My husband and his Dad were working out in the yard this a.m. and said they saw some scouts come check out our house but they didn't stick around long. Please come back!!!!
Juney, It's a myth that martins eat a lot of mosquitos. Started decades ago by a man I know who manufactures and sells martin houses. Firstly, there is only a small time frame in late evening that mosquito and martin activity overlap. Martins usually do their hawking for insects quite high and mosquitos stick close to the ground doing their own brand of hawking.
Later. ...RDR