Good luck with the HOSP's. I have taken 15 so far this year. I was using an elevator trap past years, works great but catches everything from chipmunks to native birds. It is invaluable to catch juvenile HOSP's however. I've now switched to a Crosman .177 pellet gun. It works and surprisingly, the HOSP's must know they are the target. I hardly get them anymore. I get every other native bird at my feeders, but HOSP's which pollute our neighborhood rarely land in our yard. They fly in and around, but I haven't taken a bird since February this year.

Tim! You can fashion a spooker out of the skinny wooden dowels at the hardware store, you'll need cable ties or duct tape to put them into the "T" position and then duct tape the mylar streamers. If your boxes are wooden you can screw in two little eye hooks or something to the back of the box then cable tie the dowel to the box. If you make them like that you'll have spookers for every box and you only have to keep buying the mylar banners from the dollar store. Like Nicknack said they need to come down right after fledging so these b******s don't become tolerant. Cable tie or duct tape something to the tres box temporarily till you get situated. Right know my spookers are all gunked together due to the rain which makes me real paranoid. Yesterday I ran down my driveway in the rain like a wild beast 'cause I swore there was hosp intrusion at a box but it was just tres relatives going in the box causing a ruckus. I'll relax when the wind dries out the streamers and they unfurl. Good luck Tim, Sue

I put up a Martin house a few years ago, and it is indeed a HOSP magnet. You can trap in the Martin box. I do it all the time. I don't know what kind of house you have, but there are multiple traps available for different units. I built a T-14, so could not use a trap that would just close off the entry, or the sparrows would escape when I opened the door. You can buy little wire traps which you insert into the compartment. When triggered, you can just remove the whole trap with the sparrow inside. I built one that fits my unit. I just used hardware cloth to make a box that would fit into the compartments. Then I put a plywood front on it (make the opening big enough for a sparrow, but too small for a Purple Martin)Then I used wire which holds up a small piece of metal that will fall over the hole when the sparrow step on the trigger. I got the idea from the Huber trap you can make for Bluebird boxes Huber trap directions I've never had a Martin (yet) but it works extremely well as a HOSP trap. If you wait until they start to nest, which doesn't take long at all, you can add some of their nesting material into the trap and they can't resist going in. Hope this helps.

Tim, I am so sorry this has happened. This is the third incidence this season that I have heard of a HOSP going in a nestbox with a spooker attached. I have no clue what the other spookers look liked but what does yours look like? Does it have the dowels that come over the roof of the box with streamers hanging down touching the roof of the nestbox all the way from the back to the front of the nestbox? Do you have two dowels coming out over it or just one? That is the only thing I can think of is that the spooker wasn't as scary as it should be. However....HOSP seem to be really bad this year all over the US. I am having way more of them interested in nestboxes than usual this year and so are many others. I am worried about a pair of TRES right now that haven't started laying eggs yet. A HOSP pair is hanging around them...this is at a park where I have a small trail. I have trapped five down there this Spring already.