Today is day 18. This evening after work I put out the mealies as usual, but only the Dad came and looked into the box then flew away with mealies in his beak. I open the box careful, it was empty. I must have missed the fledging! A little disappointed, but also so reliefed, all babies healthy when I saw them 5 days ago, now they should be somewhere close by learning survival skills. Hopefully they will come back someday for mealies. I cleaned the box and maybe there will be the 2nd round.

I came to this forum 2 years ago, I had a pair of Mountain Bluebirds nested in my box in the backyard, they raised 5 babies. But on the fledging day, one couldn't fly and was killed by my dogs. I was devastated. Bluebirds came last year, looked into the box, but didn¡¯t stay. This year, we moved to a 5-acre treed property in the mountains (7000 ft) and noticed bluebirds were flying around. We put up a nest box before unpacking the first of our boxes. A week later, a pair of Western BB took the residency, then some 5-6 weeks later, 5 babies fully grown and out there somewhere. I am so happy!

There is something puzzling. We erected the second box in the front yard a couple weeks after the first one, which is in the back yard. They are about 100 ft from other with a big house between them. A couple BB build a nest promptly 3 weeks ago in the second box, we saw the male and female around the box a lot, the female was also in the box quite a bit. But there was no egg in it for 3 weeks. I thought it must have been a decoy nest from the same BB that were nesting in the box in the back yard. But today, to my surprise, there is a blue egg in the box. I feel that we have more than one pair BBs flying around the property, but just have no idea if the second nest was build and egg laid by the same pair or a different pair. Do they ever wait for 3 weeks before laying eggs?

Below are some pictures from the nestlings just fledged, I put more on http://picasaweb.google.com/outabout12/Bluebirds2009#