Our purple martins

It's truly and wonderfully officially now...we are purple martin landlords. Our martin guy did find a gal, and this one stayed. So they're working on a nest and fighting off sparrows. 

So are we. We've bought a Universal Sparrow Trap that fits in a house compartment and a Deluxe Repeating Sparrow Trap that sits on the ground. I've never been one to kill ANYTHING, but English house sparrows and European starlings (both nonnative) can destroy martin eggs and murder nestlings. So we're being defensive about the martins and trying to get the enemies under control. So far, with the univerisal trap, we've nabbed two male sparrows (those are the ones you want to get) and one female. A trapped starling got away, darn it.

Nest May 5, 2013

I tried taking some videos in hopes of catching their sweet chortle. I didn't get the chortle, but you can see a martin "hissing" aggressively at a sparrow. The second video was an accident, but I got the chortle!