I had a couple of odd experiences last year. I was at a friends house and there was a baby robin hopping around in the yard. We watched from a distance for over an hour without seeing any signs of the parents. The baby had feathers but was not yet to fledgling stage. I have raised baby birds before so I brought this one home with me. I feed them human baby food, beef flavor watered down just a tiny bit. I feed them with a syringe with the needle removed. Anyway...after a few days in a bird cage inside I hung the cage outside. I noticed after a bit that there was an adult robin that was coming closer to the cage in curiosity. I set the cage on the ground a bit closer to where the adult robin was and went back a distance. To my surprise the adult robin came up to the cage and started trying to feed the baby thru the bars. I went back out and set the baby out on the ground where I could see him but where the adult could get to him. The adult immediately began to care for the baby, feeding him and calling to him to move into the brush. This was amazing to me and I thought it was an aberration but was thrilled. About a week later I was at another friends when the kids brought out a box. It held four baby redbirds, very small, barely had feathers. They had been on a job site 20 miles away and had seen the babies. Unfortunately they didnt realize the parents were probably very close. They assumed they had been abandoned and brought them home. I knew they didnt know how to care for them so I brought these home to. I followed the same procedure as with the robin until they were old enough to be out of a nest. Again I placed them in a cage outside for a bit. To utter amazement an adult redbird did the same thing as the adult robin. This time tho there were 4 babies, not just one. I was hesitant about letting them out but when both a male and a female started showing interest I decided to let them out to see what happened. I placed them in the lower branches of a cedar tree and watched. The pair of adults immediately started feeding and caring for them and several days later I realized that they had moved from the original tree and were beginning to fly. Since the babies came from 20 miles away I knew there was no chance that the babies could belong to this breeding pair of adults and was happily surprised to see that not once but twice I witnessed adult birds adopt babies from another nest. Sheila

mothraeve...you are so wrong. It is better to not put up birdhouses then to put poorly mounted houses which put the birds in danger. Houses should be mounted on slick metal poles with predator baffles. Why on earth would you want to put up a house just to have birds move in and then have the eggs or babies eaten????? Do you realize an incuating female is also in danger if a raccoon finds your houses? A raccoon can and will eat an incubating female bird if it raids the nest at the right time. You need to check out sialis.org for information on properly offering nestboxes. Just because you havn't had a problem yet doesn't mean it won't happen. In nature like it a natural cavity if a predator gets a bird, well that is nature. If it happens in a poorly mounted nestbox, that isn't nature, it is the fault of the person putting up the nestboxes. Just because lots of people put them up improperly and endanger the birds by doing so doesn't mean that you should give advice that it is ok to do this. It isn't ok to put birdhouses on trees of fences! You should take your boxes down if that is the way you think. Plus unless you actually monitor your nestboxes you would have no way of knowing if the nesting actually succeeded or not.

You're absolutely correct, Anita. I never put any type of food source near the nestboxes for that very reason. No point in giving Mr. and Mrs. Blue the problem of having to defend their nesting territory from hungry birds. House sparrows here eat mealworms as well, so I've had to be crafty about feeding the blues--we have multiple mealworm feeders but only the blues and the Carolina wrens know about the one out front! You know, when I took over one of the bluebird trails I currently monitor, several of the nestboxes had metal catfood cans nailed to the top--I'm sure the previous monitor used these to put mealworms in. Taking the cans off the nestbox rooves was my first renovation--definitely not a good idea because other birds also like mealworms--that was a fight waiting to happen. Kathy

So sorry to hear about your Blues, Nina. How very sad. Like Bluebars said, you will probably never know what happened which is too bad. Sparrow spookers are a great invention. I have to tell you a story about one this year. I had it on a house that the Blues started laying eggs in. After the 4th egg was laid Daddy Blue disappeared. Momma during this time was so very skittish. One day was a pretty windy day and you could see she didn't like the noise the spooker was making when the mylar strips would hit each other. She kept going into the box but then right back out several times. I decided to see what she would do if I took the spooker off so I went down and took it off. Got back to the house and looked at the nestbox and there was a TRES looking in the box. That fast there was another bird at that nestbox, nothing ever bothered it once the spooker was on it but as soon as it was down, bam something was checking it out. Needless to say it went back up immediately. I didn't intend on leaving it down, just wanted to see if that was what was bothering momma so much. Thankfully on day 5 of Daddy's disappearance he returned and momma settled down. Take Care Donna