Thank you Cathy!! I wasnt sure as I know nestlings are fragile and so are the eggs when it is cold. It was really wierd here a few weeks ago, the highs only got into the upper 50s!!! And with me just getting this trail was not 100% sure of the fledglings ages and didnt want them to fledge early in all this nasty weather we have been having. I plan on doing a check sunday, clearing brush, measuring the poles for the baffles and new house mounts. There is an empty pole that I want to test a Roosting box out on. I will also put up a roosting box in my yard.

I checked and found this address for your state's bluebird society: http://massbluebird.org/ You might also consider contacting local birding/ornithological groups in your area to put out some feelers. Someone belonging to such an organization may be involved with bluebird trails or at least know someone who is. Good luck and keep us posted. Kathy

Dear New Congrats! I would DEFINITELY take out some of that nesting material out from the bottom of those boxes that have eggs or babies. You could use a hamburger turner and hold up the top nest and pull out the other nests from underneath. It will be much cleaner and safer because they could fall or get pushed out accidentally. Glad that's a frog. I thought it was a snake at first. Cathy

Many wild bird eggs are blue. The most common ones we see are probably robins or bluebirds. But if you flip through the pages on this web site, http://www.wildbirds.org/info/eggs.htm you will see a wide variety of eggs of many colors. Sometimes a broken empty egg shell is the result of a competitor, such as the House Wren, who quickly steals an egg from a nest by piercing it with his beak, taking the egg and dropping it some distance away. Ants will then clean out the egg contents. Brown Headed Cowbirds are parasitic; they will remove a host egg and lay one of their own for the host to raise, often growing faster and eating more than the host's young. Cuckoos and maybe some other birds also do that. Sometimes the parent bird takes the eggshells away as their young hatch, and sometimes they eat the shells, providing additional calcium in their diet. But, knowing that that there are bluebird trails a few miles from your house, it is likely that bluebirds do nest nearby. A few miles is nothing to a bird, considering the distance some of them migrate. As for size, Bet's web site provides a comparison with bluebird and robin eggs here: http://www.sialis.org/nests.htm BlueBars