Here is the sad update. My little test plant (which I now know I planted too soon) bent it's two little leaves to the ground and never recovered. So the rest, in the egg carton kept growing. I waited for 2 sets of leaves to appear, and THEN I put them in the ground. They now have more leaves and are obviously happy and growing. Except... There were two late "hatchers", and I let them wait. But outside. I wanted to acclimate them to the night air. HUGE mistake! I am a triple murderer now!! Those two egg shell babies, nestled in the egg carton were sitting on the edge of the jacuzzi, where there is sun in the day! Last night as I slept, a big wind came up... I woke up thinking I would go give them a drink, and they were no place to be found... Until I glanced in the jacuzzi! OMG!! The shells were broken, the egg carton was floating upside down, and I murdered two precious little seedlings!! Lesson learned!!

Good info. Thanks. Dave

I'm another satisfied long time Bobbex user, my new property has deer almost daily, often for hours at a time - they bed down on the lawn and make themselves quite at home. My issue with the Bobbex product is that it requires spraying so infrequently, often a new growth spurt will take place and I'll have new foliage I haven't noticed that is not protected and that will be munched back. It seems to be most true of roses though, and I've given up on those, I'm not going to grow them this location. My goal with this house and acre was open, welcoming, friendly to neighbors and 2-footed guests, I do not want a stockade type fence and given the steepness of the lot in back, fencing would limit my own access for maintenance from the street below. Anything over 4' across the front doesn't meet city code either, making a three sided deer fence mostly useless. I'm learning to work around them - it's been a process ;)

Laura, so sorry to hear about your eggs. To me it sounds like a House wren, do you have them in your area? I would mark the eggs that are in the nestbox with a marker, just put a dot on them to see if they are being moved at all however my guess is the Blues see this as a failed nesting. Once you know the eggs aren't being incubated or moved at all for sure, you can remove the eggs and nest and hopefully they will start over. Sometimes moving the nestbox or just turning it to face a new way is helpful because sometimes they won't renest in a box that they had a failed nesting. However if this was a wren you could have the same problem. Read up on sialis on the house wrens. Oh and it wouldn't have been a chickadee, they wouldn't have done that, they are low man on the totem pole and once the blues evicted them they would have moved on. Next time you could try a 1 1/4" hole reducer if you have a dee nest to prevent the bluebirds from taking it over. Another thought is the House Sparrow, do you use sparrow spookers like seen on the sialis site? They could prevent a House Sparrow attack. Good luck!!