Purple Martin Gourd Bird Houses

See also: Purple Martin Bird Houses, Other Purple Martin Bird Houses, All Bird Houses

Once you have decided to become a purple martin landlord, you have to decide what type of martin houses to buy. One of the popular types, both with the martins and the landlords, is the gourd martin bird house.

As you can see in the above picture, the gourd houses grouped together in a colony (an essential for purple martins) make for an unusual living garden sculpture.

Each individual gourd bird house can make a super home for a family of purple martins. They come with design variations that can be quite distinctive, but also practical.

The gourd house pictured is beautifully contoured. However, that is not just for appearance. The safety of the baby purple martins, and the eggs before, is obviously very important to a successful martin colony. The smooth contours of this gourd helps to deter predators, who will find it difficult to perch on the bird house. This example is an 11 inch plastic gourd house, which have been shown to attract more birds than smaller plastic or natural gourds. It has a traditional round hole, and for the comfort of the fledgling birds, and incubating parents, is moulded from re-processed polypropylene, which has been UV inhibited for long life outdoors. It has also been pigmented for light control.

Purple martins are used to nesting at a height, but again safety factors are taken into account with the design of the pole, and the rack from which the gourd martin houses will hang. A smooth pole is normally used, such as the one shown left, to stop ground predators, such as cats, climbing to the nests. It also needs to be robust, so that any storms and winds leave the structure and individual bird houses intact.