Last night Terry captured this photo of this female purple martin adding some grass to the nestbox C4.
This is the first evidence of nesting at Hammo. C-4 is located near Chase Pond at Hammonasset. We expect things to pick up at all the boxes now and eggs will soon follow. I checked and we do not have a landlord for C-4. The tree swallows nest earlier than the martins, but they are right on time according to previous year's records of egg laying.
We have already had one purple martin tragedy when a female purple martin flew into one of the nest boxes and then tried to back out with her wings open, she was trapped and by the time we were notified, she unfortunately had died. The good news is that the male was already in the box, trapped by her body so by removing her we at least saved him. The doors of the martin houses are small and designed to keep out the larger birds that compete for housing. This is an unfortunate consequence that has happened only once before that we are aware of.
This is the first evidence of nesting at Hammo. C-4 is located near Chase Pond at Hammonasset. We expect things to pick up at all the boxes now and eggs will soon follow. I checked and we do not have a landlord for C-4. The tree swallows nest earlier than the martins, but they are right on time according to previous year's records of egg laying.
We have already had one purple martin tragedy when a female purple martin flew into one of the nest boxes and then tried to back out with her wings open, she was trapped and by the time we were notified, she unfortunately had died. The good news is that the male was already in the box, trapped by her body so by removing her we at least saved him. The doors of the martin houses are small and designed to keep out the larger birds that compete for housing. This is an unfortunate consequence that has happened only once before that we are aware of.