Made on a Mac

    The birds were due march 25th, as in previous years. we Worked on getting the racks ready in the first weeks of March. during the winter, we had built a new emt tubing rack system for the wooden pole, matching what we had done on the steel pole last year.

    the Snow had melted and the drifts were gone by the 15th, march was unusually hot, reaching 80 degrees one day, and we thought everything was moving along per schedule again this year.

    Well, we got everything up and ready, the pmca scout report on the 19th showed us that some birds were appearing in southern iowa about 90 miles from us. so we were anxiously awaiting their arrival, but to our dismay, the weather changed drastically and winter came back at us again, snowing on the eve of the 25th. fortunately the birds were late, not showing up until April 2nd, the latest they have ever come.

2011, Our 5th complete season..........

    we are using the double walled s & K Bo eleven plus gourds with clinger entrances on the  tunnels again this year, we have nothing but praise for this product and just love them. we have 2 racks, each with 12 gourds. Jo placed a starter nest into each one made of straw and soft white pine needles, but, it’s a only a beginning, as each bird is different and will use most of the material or not, it is amazing at what you will find inside after the are done. just as some make a mud dam and some don’t.

this male was the first to show up, the next day we had 3. two days later we had 7. May 12 we have more than 30.

May 5, we have attracted more birds, and they are frantic when i set up the camera, but are coming back in to land, they always play musical chairs as they compete for mates, lots of fun to watch.

May 12, we have had a couple days of rain. The birds are getting ready to nest, and i was able to catch them out front at the dead end of the street gathering materials for the mud dams in front of the nests. oddly, not all of them make the mud dam. we shall be seeing green leaves coming into the gourds soon. then, the egg laying will begin again.

We had been anxiously awaiting the laying of eggs, the green leaves have been coming in. Finally, on may 31, we had our first eggs. by june 16 we had a total of 116 eggs.

June 20:  we had our first hatchlings. by june 24, we had 65 babies and 51 eggs.

First of july became seeringly hot, setting temperature records with over 110 degree heat indexes. Hardly any wind, temperatures hovered at 100 for several days, we lost 14 babies by july 10.


Also in the beginning of july, a couple of martins decided to make their family a month later than the others. As a matter of fact, as of july 26, all the other houses are empty with all survivors having fledged. will be another 3 weeks before the last brood is gone.

totals for 2011 season

120 eggs

98 babies

15 didn’t make it

83 fledged


even with the disastrous weather, we had more fledglings than the previous years.

a short clip of some of the fledges getting their flying experience.