Booklet - Starling and Sparrow Trap Controller Plans

Booklet - S&S Controller Plans

The starling and sparrow nest-box trap that protects your Purple Martin colony even while you're away!!!

This 17-page booklet contains plans and operating instructions for building your own S & S Controller.  

This booklet features 32 photos, 12 illustrations, a materials list, a cutting list, and a complete set of plans for building the trap.  Requires 8-10 hours to build.

What is the S&S Controller? It is a starling and sparrow nest-box trap that protects your Purple Martin Colony, even while you’re away. It has multiple fake holes that give it a real martin house appearance.

This trap does great in early spring while you still have the holes in your martin house plugged. After the holes are opened, the trap is not quite as effective. It all stands to reason, because you are offering numbers of martin houses, and you have only one or two such traps. But after the martins have arrived, it becomes very effective again, since the martins will exert some territorial defense against the starlings and sparrows, driving them to this nest-box trap.

A note from Adam Troyer: First of all, I will state that starlings and sparrows are aliens. They may be legally trapped. They are considered as a rat in the barn, or a mouse in the house. These aliens must be controlled to maintain a successful Purple Martin colony. By reducing the numbers of these pests, it increases, in return, the numbers of our native birds.

This is what happens: a nasty intruder visits your martin colony. With the colony’s pressure, it investigates what it thinks is another martin house. It can’t resist. It enters! It tries to escape, but ends up in the PVC pipe. The trapped bird fails to get its footing, nor can it get lift by flapping its wings. The bird slides down into a cage that is only four feet off the ground. Meanwhile, the trap has already reset. Such an observation is very rewarding to a Purple Martin landlord.

Coming home one day, I had three starlings in one trap. The rewarding part was that my martins were all untouched and okay.

A normal year nets about 70 aliens at my colony site. And this is naturally a great help in successfully fledging scores of baby Purple Martins. After a number of years of research and development, it is very exciting to touch home plate.