eggs not hatching…

[Gusano]

Sooo.. we are on our 4th nesting.. and it hasn’t been all roses…
First nesting–4 eggs, 4 blues successfully fledged
Second nesting– severe thunderstorms scared mom and she abandoned nest (we have nest cam) after 4 days of avoiding the nest, we tossed the eggs and the nest.
Third nesting–after two eggs were laid, somehow mysteriously, one egg disappeared and the other one was broken on the ground underneath the box…(cam wasn’t on so we still to this day are clueless what happened)
Fourth ( Current) nesting– mom didn’t play around and before we could even get the previous old nest out she built a brand new full size nest right on top of the old one so we have a double decker nest right now that almost reaches to the hole!

Well, she laid 5 eggs, this Wednesday AM ( May 31) the first one hatched, then in the next 24 hours two more hatched, to give us a total of 3 babies with two eggs left. Well this AM .. one of the babies died for some reason, and we now have (2) two day old babies, with 2 eggs still sitting there… I read that you are supposed to wait 4 days after the first baby hatches before you toss the old eggs but just trying to get some hands on advice from the forum.. With the babies moving around like crazy in the nest, I am somewhat concerned that the baby that died, died from smashing her head continuously on the two unhatched eggs….

Any advice would be welcome from the forum please!

Thanks
Daniel and Mercedes

[dogsandbirds]

They don’t die from crashing around in the nest but they do die for various other reasons. Leave the eggs alone for now. Others may yet hatch.

Gin
Atlanta, GA

[Gusano]

ok.. is it normal to have a baby die for some random reason? I guess I am looking for a number..once a season? Thanks!

[dogsandbirds]

I think it’s a miracle when any of them fledge because so much can happen. Birth defects, poisoning whether insecticide or wrong food, starvation, hypothermia, etc. The list is almost endless. And then there’s the times when we just don’t know what happens. Their environment isn’t controlled so there are many variables.

So, yes. A death in the nest can be considered a fairly normal thing but I can’t give you any numbers. Sometimes you could go years without a nestling dying and then other times there is a high failure rate. Again, the variables come into play.

I don’t know for sure what happened in the third nest, but my money is on a house wren or a house sparrow. Sounds like it could be either, but I bet the HOWR.

Gin
Atlanta, GA

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