I'd put the entire thing together so any martins you attract can pick their own compartment. Some of our birds prefer lower ones and others prefer upper ones.

Be sure you keep birds other than Purple Martins from building nests in the house's compartments. Once you have an established Purple Martin population, they are pretty good about chasing away non-Martins. However, during the first year a house is up, often the Martins will refuse to occupy it if there are any other types of birds nesting in it. You can put it up and stick styrofoam, paper or plastic cups into the holes to plug them up until you actually see Purple Martins around your neighborhood.

Sometimes it is hard to attract Purple Martins to a new house, but if you are patient they will come.

We have part-time neighbors who are up here only on weekends and down in the D-FW metroplex during the week and their martins live in their Purple Martin house, but come hang out with our martins at our house during the day...and return home to their place at night. I suppose they do that because Purple Martins like human company and I guess they miss 'their' people during the week.

"Our" martins like to sit on the power line and watch me work in the garden and I love to listen to them sing. Sometimes at night, we sit outside in the lawn chairs and watch them fly in endless loops as they feed on insects in the air. It is cheap entertainment.

We have friends who've lived here approximately 20 years and they have between 150-200 purple martins occupying their many purple martin houses. I think one of the big attractions for the birds is the very large TV antenna they've had up for that entire time upon which many, many birds can perch at one time. (TV reception here in the Red River Valley is difficult at best because it is such a low-lying area.) We have maybe 10-15 birds a year, although that number doubles when the neighbor's birds come over to hang out, and then the number really goes up with the young birds begin flying every year. Our birds love to sit on top of the weathervane that is atop the barn cupola. Usually the largest and most dominant bird sits on the vane and chases off the others, but sometimes he'll let another bird sit there with him.

The hardest part will be to attract them to your place the first year because martins like to go where martins already exist. Some people play a tape recording of purple martins singing in order to attract purple martins the first year a new house is put up.

In addition to helping with insect control, the birds provide a lot of entertainment value and they also chase away hawks and owls that try to come prey upon our poultry. Purple Martins are very territorial but they don't seem to bother our cats and dogs the way blue jays or mockingbirds do.

Dawn

Thanks for the info. I'll put the other part together tonight and get the pole set this week. Hopefully, I'll have the house up by the 1st. It'll be time to declare war on the starlings.