Yes Deanie. Not a dumb question. You want to keep the HOSPs out of the box, and the Chickadee hole is too small for them. I don't know that a hole reducer would keep a House Wren out though. You may not have them in your yard. I had never ever laid eyes upon one until last summer. On May 1st, I had one show up in my yard. It went from box to box, filling each one with sticks. They are like the HOSPs in that they will destroy eggs and nests of other cavity nesters. They do not look or sound like our sweet Carolina Wrens.~Angie

This is excatly what happened to me, as I stated above, although the nest I found the bumble bee in wasn't inhabited by Dees, at least not yet, but there was some nesting material inside, so one of my backyard birds had started getting ready but most likely abandoned it due to the bee. I know how you felt, it was scary, not knowing where the bee was hiding or whether or not it would try to sting me. I'm just glad that you got to the bottom of it and that nobody was hurt in the process. Linda

Hi Kathleen- I'll address you since the other posts are old. I am so very sorry that you have experienced this. Did you read what the responses were to the older post of one that lost a bluebird on the nest? I would just repeat everything that they said. If absolutely no sign of injury, I would suspect lawn pesticides, but considering what happened to the 1st person that posted & didn't see signs of injury on her bluebird, it did turn out to be house sparrows. I would highly suspect this. Do you think the female is dead too? If so, again I would be suspicious of HOSP. Answering your question, the male would not starve himself, nor is he able to brood eggs. If the female died too, the eggs wouldn't have hatched because the female is the one to incubate the eggs. She has a brooding patch on her lower abdomen that the male doesn't have. If she is alive, she may not be returning to nest because of the failed nest situation, especially if there was foul play. Make sure you know that she is not returning before removing the nest & eggs. If she is alive, she will probably try to find a new mate. Without repeating too much, make sure your birdhouse is on a pole with a baffle & put a sparrow spooker up after the 1st egg. If you know for sure that the nest has been abandoned & you don't get any activity, you may want to change the location of the box (birdhouse). If you immediately get a house sparrow setting up shop, then you'll know that was most likely the culprit. Again, if female is not returning, now would be the time to get a Van Ert trap for your house to trap the male & female HOSP. If you do, make sure you are monitoring every hour if possible so you don't trap a native bird. They can die in there if without food for too long. One of the previous posts left a website for the Van Ert trap. Again, the previous posts left great advice for your situation. This site is not as active as it used to be for bluebirders, so you may want to post to bluebirdnut.com. Lots of bluebird experts are on that site like this one used to have. That's where I go whenever I need advice. BTW, I lived in Atlanta for ten years (live in AL now). Very sorry to hear about your bluebird tragedy. Hope you'll have another pair come for a future nesting, but definitely get that sparrow spooker!

While letting them nest without allowing their eggs to hatch is better than allowing their eggs to hatch, it is still not a good solution. Remember they will quickly figure out if they are wasting time sitting on dud eggs and will just re-lay. You are correct that just evicting them could cause more trouble for the Bluebirds. As Donna said, please get a sparrow spooker up on the Bluebird box, and get yourself a Van Ert in-box trap asap. Eliminating the HOSP is really the only way to go, as they are extremely prolific.