You might try what my husband just did recently to the fire ant mounds in our yard. He sprinkled grits on them. Uncooked grits. Supposedly they take them into the nest for food but when it gets eaten it "blows up" and kills them. I laughed, but you know, it worked! tara He also wads up a brown paper bag and hangs it near our doors when wasp and yellow jackets start hanging around. They think it's another nest and leave to build elsewhere.

That's great! It's good to hear people are having success. For my local bluebirds this has been a poor season so far. 1st they mated in the spring then a hawk took the female. Then he got another, had 5 eggs, hatched 2 days late, and died at 6 days of age due to poor weather and parenting. Now I may have lost another female! However MR has one now. At another site from hear it's going smooth. The blues have 4 eggs w/ a sparrow spooker and have yet to have a problem. Good for you because my birds are now struggling. Congrats, Tim

Hi Pam and anyone else interested, After my last posting, we had a very high wind come up for about an hour. It blew some branches and clumps of leaves down all around our area, but no rain. It also blew down a large piece of wood that may have frightened the baby, but for whatever reason, the little bird went back under the fence to outside of our yard, and the parents seemed to keep him there this time. In fact, he quite moved on from being squenched up next to the fence, and I could not see him any more with a quick check, but I did hear him answering his mother, and the parents kept coming back and were in different trees to watch after him. They were actually in the trees they perched in to watch their original bluebird home, about 10 feet closer to the front of the house than they had been through this ordeal in our fenced back yard. This morning when I got up, the bluebird parents were not there nor was he. The parents did come back a couple of times when I was outside and did not seem distressed. They did not seem to be calling to him at all. I didn't hear them sing or call any at all. The trees they were sitting in as I mentioned before were closer to the front of my yard and I cannot see the birds from my back deck with binoculars like I could when they were looking after him in the shed. I didn't want to stay too close to see and frighten him into running again, so I missed seeing if they were going down and feeding him, if they had encouraged him to fly and if he did, or anything at all. All I know is that by about 10:00 a.m. when I went around to sit on my little concrete bench which is about 15 feet from the bluebird house, the mom and dad sat in the tree there where they always looked after their home like they were communing with me. Lol. I did hear what I know was some kind of baby bird high in the trees in my neighbor's yard right next to this area. Since I have not heard a baby bird calling from that area throughout this weekend, I'm just going to believe that it was him and that he was able to fly and get up there with his parents calling him at some time that I didn't see. He could almost fly the day before, so I'm hoping that they get him moved down the block to the little field where they moved and where his siblings are. I hope they bring all their babies back to see me some day the way another bluebird family did a couple of years ago. I'll try to let you know if I see all 5 of the babies some time, but there are lots of bluebirds around here, so it may be hard to tell. Last week, there was a whole family of about 7 bluebirds on my roof for about 30 minutes. Karen

Here in Central WI, I have two pairs of Blues on their second nesting, they are both incubating at the moment. One nesting should be hatching by this wednesday and the other about five days later, both have four eggs. Not sure if any would just be starting a second nesting this late now though. The one pair started the second nest within days of fledging the first brood. The other pair waited over two weeks! This is only my fourth year hosting/monitoring Bluebirds and I have always had them bring the babies back and keep eating the mealworms I offered until they left in Oct/November. Not sure if they all stay at the feeders though, I think it greatly depends on where you live if the Blues migrate from your area in the Fall or not. Donna