I have a good friend who has caught the love of bluebirds from me. She just bought a house and put it up and the next day had a couple checking it out. She was absolutely thrilled. She has been monitoring and keeping me up to date constantly. Then Saturday she knew the babies should have hatched but when she opened the box the nest was EMPTY! She was just heartbroken. They went to their grandson’s game and when she came back she started looking around on the ground. She found 4 of the five babies on the ground. Two were dead and two still alive. She put them back in the nest and the parents have been feeding them. What could have pulled the babies from the nest? There is a baffle on the pole. Would a house wren do that? Thanks for any help.
He might be back if he’s trying to nest nearby. You could try a guard and see what happens. Let’s hope he thinks he finished the job and won’t be back.
I re-read your post and I think you’re friend’s culprit is a HOSP. It could be either but I had a HOSP do this exact thing. I watched him as he went up and peered into the hole of my box with bluebird eggs. What I didn’t know was that as he peeked in the box my baby blues thought it was their momma with food so they would stretch their necks up high for food and the HOSP would grab them a d throw them out of the box. I kept putting them back in and the HOSP kept throwing them out. I stayed on guard until my husband came home with a shot gun.m
Wrens are eating my mealworms like crazy and I don’t want to attract them but I can’t bear to stop feeding them to my blues :(
It seems like the blues get a few minutes of worms and then those #%}*^ wrens get in.
Lisa, best way to stop that is to give the blues only a small amount when you know they are there and they can them right up, and then feed them 2 times a day. If you put out a lot at once, yes, every bird around will eat them!