Sorry to hear this Tim. If I were you I would remove the HOSP nest and hope the blues return. I doubt you will get the female HOSP now that the male has left. In my experience with TRES I see them highly motivated to run off any bird in paired boxes when they are nest building. Once they are laying/incubating and feeding nestlings they focus much more on that then defending the other box. I have lots of paired boxes and that is what I have found anyway. As far as the Blues letting the HOSP take over the box...well they know they cannot win I suppose, no eggs or nestlings to defend so it is hard to say. I think each bluebird is different too on how hard they defend things. This year I have a hugely territorial male, never had one like this before. He has chased off my chickadees and is trying to chase off all the Tree Swallows in the yard. He is defending four nestboxes, two of these are 65 yards or so from the box they have eggs in. Nothing will be nesting in the box paired 35 feet from the blues nestbox...he won't allow it. The chickadees weren't even house hunting, just trying to eat out of the birdfeeders and he won't allow it. A couple times I have seen a HOSP come to the feeder and I quickly try to get the bb gun but the Male bluebirds chases it away before I can even think about it. He won't stop chasing until it is out of the yard too. I am curious to see if he calms down a bit once the eggs hatch which should be next week. Good luck to you, hope your blues can get down to business now that that HOSP is gone. Donna

Donna mine usually disappear when the weather gets cold and rainy but the other behaviors I have never seen. This is a very odd nesting season to say the least. Cathy

Thanks Kendra, it is so sad they cannot eat something else during bad weather or that we can't really feed them. I have checked all the nestboxes and we lost three boxes here at the house, 17 babies total in our yard. There are however three boxes with babies yet, one box the babies were little yet so momma was still sitting on them, one just hatched either today or yesterday and the other is at day 15 so they are fully feathered and doing ok, I could only see four of the six so I am hoping there aren't any dead ones underneath anywhere but I couldn't feel any. Down at the park one mom was sitting on the babies so I couldn't tell for sure but they looked fine, the other box had one dead one and the rest looked fine, thankfully. So it looks as if we lost 18 total TRES with this bad weather. I am sure the loss is much much greater than that as this is just with our eight boxes of them. I am sure there are lots more people with dead TRES in their nestboxes. So sad. Donna

We have had major rains here lately, I think all through the mid to east US. No drought this year I don't think. I get so nervous the rain will go right though the hole but the nest stays dry and cozy. I've been so paranoid with momma all along to take care of babies. It seemed the daddy did most of the feeding with the momma making occasional appearances. I sure miss him outside my window. I'm so glad the 2 babies are okay.