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By Jim Bywaters
Rappahannock News Writer
Most people trying to attract martins for the first time rush to get their martin housing opened so as not to miss the arrival of martin “scouts” in their particular area. This is too early for new breeding sites and provides other bird species a chance to take over your housing.
Contrary to popular folklore, “scouts” are not looking for new breeding sites to lead their flocks back too. “Scouts” are nothing more than the very first martins to arrive or pass through a given area on their way back to their previous nesting sites. New arrivals come daily with the oldest martins arriving first and the youngest ones last.
Older martins rarely, if ever, can be attracted to breed at new locations.
This is because martins develop a tremendous reliability to the exact site where they bred the previous year. There are exceptions to this rule, one being that for some reason the returning adult birds previous nesting site has been destroyed or abandoned by the landlord, causing the martins to seek new housing.
It is usually only yearling martins that can be attracted to breed at new sites because they have never bred anywhere before and have developed no site preferences. Yearling martins are martins that fledged last year and are the age group that typically colonize new breeding sites. They begin arriving four to six weeks after the adult martins that nested last season return to our area, which was March 20th at my colony.
The yearling martins continue arriving for an additional four to six weeks after this date. This means martins can be attracted to new
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