Feb 20, 2012   
The purple martins have returned. Two males. I really wasn't sure we would have birds this year - last year was just terrible. We started hitting 100' weather in May. Between Jun 1st and Aug 31st, we had 78 days over 100' - with very little rain. A lot of the babies jumped out of their nests early and we didn't know where to put them back. I made my best guess on our annual totals, but I bet a lot of the little ones did not make it.

Mar, 2012   
I don't remember the exact dates, but all houses are up and all rooms are open. We have 62 cavities available. We don't intend to add any more - we have plenty.

Mar 31, 2012   
I lowered the original bird house - thought we had a sparrow problem. Removed the sparrow nest and found out we have 17 nests. I haven't seen any nesting material being taken into the rooms.

Apr 6, 2012   
We have 11 eggs. The fun has started. The first egg was laid on Apr 2nd - that sounds earlier than usual.

Apr 11, 2012   
Nest check: 47 nests; 24 eggs. We replaced the cable and winch on pole #1. The winch is nice but it takes a good 5 minutes to lower the bird house. We'll have to replace it again.

Apr 16, 2012   
Nest check: 53 nests; 45 eggs. Its interesting comparing the same timeframe to last year's blog. Last year was extremely windy and we couldn't do nest checks. We were also having drought conditions. By the end of April last year, we had less than 2.50" of rain since the beginning of the year. We've already had 8 inches of rain this year.

Apr 21, 2012   
Nest check: 56 nests; 124 eggs; 2 young. Yep - they laid eggs earlier this year. Normally we average the first lay date around the Apr 16th. I hadn't updated our next check form with the projected hatch dates so I was shocked to find babies already. Compared to last year at this time ... 10 eggs. Also saw our first sub-adult last year on this date. We'll have to start watching more closely - we haven't seen any yet.

Apr 26, 2012   
Nest check: 56 nests; 222 eggs;14 young. Something else different this year - the number of nests with 7 eggs. We might have had a couple of nests in the past with 7 eggs - currently we have 7 nests with 7 eggs and 1 nest with 8 eggs. .

Apr 28, 2012   
Finally saw our first sub-adult. I can't believe we had babies before the sub-adults even started to arrive.

May 2, 2012   
We went a little longer than I like between nest checks - its been windy. 56 nests; 250 eggs; 33 young. We're up to 16 nests with 7 eggs/young. The nest with 8 eggs currently has 7 hatchlings. We left the remaining egg, but I think too many days have passed for it to hatch. We removed a starling nest and a sparrow nest. The sparrow nest had eggs - we replaced it with a trap. Hopefully the sparrow returns so we can trap it before it gets too dark.