Wonderful news, Caroline! Congratulations on your new brood. I just checked our nest boxes yesterday evening and found 4 new bluebird eggs in one house. Life is good! Happy first day of summer!

Congratulations!!

Where do the PM's nest if there aren't any gourds/houses? Will they nest in trees? Or only in cavities?

Lydia 1959...As far as it's known, from decades of research by the PMCA and other organizations, the Purple Martins in the eastern half of the U.S. nest only in man-made cavities, and near human activity.

Since the times before Columbus they have "imprinted" on humans. The eastern Native Americans lured them to their villages and gardens by setting natural gourds on sticks and dead trees. They knew when the Purple Martins were near, the flying insects were kept at bay.

There is a small scattering of PMs on the west coast, and they seem to be nesting in single family groups around piers. There was a lot of excitement when a colony was discovered nesting in drainage pipes under highway overpasses around the Sacramento area.

Still, for the vase majority of the Purple Martins, and the entire eastern population, it's man made housing. You can see the problem since fewer and fewer people are offering, and safely managing, housing for them.

The PMs, along with our native blue birds, started declining in the 1950s and were fast approaching endangered status. The main causes were lack of housing being offered to them, loss of wooden fence posts in the case of the blue birds, and the explosion of the imported, non-native English House Sparrow that will kill/destroy any cavity nester, its eggs and its chicks, that it can find...PMs, bluebirds, chickadees, woodpeckers, nuthatches, etc. all fall prey to these non-natives.

So, loss of habitat, explosive numbers of non-native competitors, and a lack of well-managed housing not being offered is the main culprits of the decline of our native cavity nesters.

I wish you could come visit. I sit under the feeder tree each morning with my tea and listen to the beautiful chatter, chortles, and songs of the PMs. They're here for such a short time, but I try to enjoy them enough to last the rest of the year.

They travel to and from southern Brazil each year to raise their families. They come back to the same colony each year.

They are magical!

I have got to STOP opening your posts cause it makes me want to go get a martin house so bad...but I'm not in a position to devote the time and energy so I'll wait a bit longer...someday though!! Would us having dogs be a problem?

The babies are precious...I hope you have a bunch more soon!!

Thanks so much for all the information Caroline! Very interesting indeed!

Can you tell if any of the "transplanted eggs" have hatched?

Thanks for all the kind remarks, folks.

LizGA, before you take the plunge, I'd be happy to share the things that have worked for me, and much more importantly, the things that have not worked!

Janie, the adopted eggs are in Gourds 4 and 12. I marked them with a Sharpie pen. They haven't hatched yet. I'm anxiously awaiting the results, too.

I'm also concerned about Egg 6 that mysteriously appeare in Gourd 5. The other eggs should hatch tomorrow. If only two hatch, I'll assume the extra/late egg came from one of the new hens in the new nests. They sometimes "lose" their gourd and lay in another hen's nest.

If it doesn't hatch on time to be a Gourd 5 egg, I'll move it to one of the new nests.

caroline, I so admire your enthusiasm over your birds. really enjoy reading your posts with updates :o)

Congratulations Caroline!!

Thanks for sharing these beautiful birds with us (love the naked babies). LOL

Back when we lived in the country, we had a martin house. Love them. They eat skeeters! Now, in the city again, I don't have a martin house.

Might get enthused about putting another one up.

Would you post your do's and don'ts here, for me to see too?

Moni

I don't know if it is true for bird eggs, but is a known phenomonem with chicken eggs. Eever wonder why a brood of chicks all hatch in the same day although the the eggs were laid over several days? This what research says. During incubation, the chicks do mature at different times in the eggs, but will begin to sync with each other if the eggs touch. There is communication between the eggs! The first to mature waits a bit until it is motivated. The motivation comes from the first chick pippng its shell. This is sensed by the others - if the eggs are touching - and encourages the rest to begin pipping their shells.

This was discovered by hatcheries. They found that to synchronize a clutch, it was important to allow the eggs to touch.

The next time you look at a hen's nest of eggs that she has been brooding, notice if the eggs are touching - bet they are. The hen periodically rolls the eggs and then collects them together. Commercial incubators also turns the eggs for best results.

congratulations, Mom! lol
thanks for the update!