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Irritated today as we went from 58 this morning, to now 37!!! 37 and rainy! I have 3 pairs of bluebirds among 2 trails.

My poor 1st pair has 5 eggs, mother is incubating. POOR things! Praying she can do her job well as the forecast changes to 60's and 70's by Friday, but with a hard freeze tomorrow night! Dang it!!! $%^$!

But more annoyingly, the one pair that hasn't layed, has a HOSP checking out their box today! I'm so annoyed! They completed their nest. Mr HOSP left his droppings in the nest. I put monofilament up in hopes of discouraging him, but I'm still fearful of losing this 3rd pair to a takeover.

Someone put a spooker up out of emergency last year before laying occured, and the blues still layed.

I'm tempted to do the same! As much as it would be better trapping him, I can't do it with the nest in the way. Anyone else think it may be good to play it on the safe side and throw a spooker up??
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4/25 UPDATE: Bluebirds layed their first egg today, only for that damn Male HOSP to ignore the monofilament, start building his own nest, and throw the egg to the ground.

I am pretty furious right now. Should have put the Spooker up, I'm sure it wouldn't have bothered the blues. Had to take the soiled nest out, which had blue shell pieces in it, and put my Van Ert in.

The nest is more or less a mess now, and I've stored it in my garage for now.

Hoping to nail the B$%^$% this evening, fashion the nest back, and hope the bluebirds haven't realized and continue to lay.

This is proof that maybe we need to act different in special cases like this. It was the FIRST egg of this pair so I had virtually no chance to get the spooker up and protect it. This sparrow is gonna be missing a head when I'm done with it!

~Tim
NE OHIO

This post was edited by ohsoblue77 on Thu, Apr 25, 13 at 16:30