Im so sorry to hear this....it has been a TERRIBLE year for the TRES. If you look through the last few pages here you will see that many were lost. I lost 3 babies, the I am SO sad thread. Just one of many posts reporting lost TRES. The National Wildlife magazine april/may edition has an article titled Empty Skies Insect-eating birds that feed on the wing are vanishing from parts of North America and scientists dont know why. In my case I know it had to do with losing 1 of the parents leaving just one to feed 6 babies in horrid weather. I think most of the sad reports on here are weather related. I have not seen any attempt at a second nesting here but it has only been six days and 3 babies did fledge. There is one report of a second nesting on the forum so far this year. Good luck with yours!

We checked the box and the nest was flattened completely. We had gone out to purchase and prepare a new bluebird box and a new post as the old one was warping. We removed the old nest and took out the pool and house to dig a deeper hole for the new house. The parent stood by the entire time we did this. There were no babies left in the box, however, at the very bottom of the nest we did find one egg that did not hatch. We don't think this is why the parents kept coming back. We do think they just wanted to keep a claim on the box. Well, within two minutes (before we even got back to our house) the male flew back to the new house and both parents have been flying back and forth for the last four days. The male keeps looking inside the box and if any other bird attempts to come near, they are quickly chased away by the male. We are anxiously awaiting for them to start building their new nest. They may be still feeding their babies who should be pretty well on their own by now. It was interesting how they watched us as we installed their "new house" and immediately returned to it. I'll keep you posted and hopefully building will begin soon. We saw them do this before they built their last nest. It took days for them to actually start building. We checked and checked and finally started to see the female bringing in nesting material. Hope it happens soon. It has been very hot here - temperatures around 90 and above. Lots of baby cardinals, bluejayss, etc. coming around our feeders near our house. Everyone is quite busy! And the babies are quite insistent on being fed even though some are a large as their parents.

Ken there is no reason for them to be at the box until all the eggs are laid and the mother is ready to sit on them and keep them warm. In hot weather she will sit on them less; sometimes she will rest on the edge of the nest and just stay with the eggs even though they don't need her warmth. I have a camera in the nestbox so I have observed this. My experience has been that once they start laying the mother lays one egg each day every day until she is finished. I have never known there to be gaps between laying. Do you know exactly when the eggs were laid? There should be one new egg every day.

That is always an amazing sight! I saw chickadees fledging a few years ago by chance and I was hooked since then. BTW, you may want to put a metal hole reducer to 1-1/8". I have a friend whose nest box had chickadee nestlings and they were attacked by a house sparrow. She was heartbroken.