Blog history - 2004

Feb 10, 2004
The Purple Martins are on their way and we are rushing around trying to get everything ready. We aren't planning many changes for the 2004 season: We will be adding 8 additional rooms this year for a total of 35 cavities. This will include 2 new SuperGourds.

Mar 19, 2004
All purple martin cams are back on line. We've also added two more SuperGourds. Cavity total is now at 37.

Mar 30, 2004   
Conducted an unofficial nest check. We could tell where there had been some nest building activity, but it is still too soon to determine which cavities are in use. One male PM stayed in his compartment the entire nest check. That was a new experience for us. We've given up trying to count how many PM's we might have. The most we counted were 41.

Apr 29, 2004   
We've added one more SuperGourd. This is it - we don't have any more to put up. Our cavity total is now up to 38. Currently we have 34 nests, 2 cavities with purple martins who have yet to get the nesting urge and 2 empty gourds. We started the official nest checks on Apr 14th. As of today we have 17 eggs. The nest cam was moved from MH-1 to MH-5. I don't know what the deal is with the birds in room #1 - they aren't in any rush to start nest building. I've updated the nest check spreadsheet.

May 30, 2004   
As of today we have 68 eggs and 133 hatchlings. The eggs in the nest cam room are due to hatch this Wednesday. So far we've removed 9 eggs that didn't hatch and currently have 3 more eligible to remove. We've had 100% occupancy for quite some time, and as of May 28th, all 38 cavities have had eggs. We are actually over capacity - there are two or three young males sleeping on the porches at night. Here is a list of the other nests in the yard: Mockingbird (4 eggs), American sparrow (1 egg), Killdeer (4 eggs), scissortail (?) and kingbird (?). I'm not able to check the scissortail or kingbird nests. We had an assortment of nests last year, but only the killdeer's survived our Oklahoma wind storms. Hopefully, this year they will be more successful.

Jun 7, 2004   
Two hatchlings from the first nest fledged today. We have 16 eggs and 182 hatchlings remaining for a total of 200. The sparrow nest and scissortail nest have both been destroyed - the sparrow nest by a cat (this is a guess) and the scissortail nest by the wind. The killdeer eggs are gone so they must have hatched. The mockingbird was sitting on her nest this evening.