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

Today = 18 days since 1st 3 baby bluebirds hatched in my frontyard birdhouse and 17 days since the other 2 baby bluebirds hatched. We had a rainstorm late yesterday, so I thought the babies would not come out until this morning. Fortunately, it was a "normal" rainstorm without all the high winds we've had in the last couple of months. I got up very early this morning and I think there is only 1 left in the box. I hear his lonely little sad chirping and have seen the dad bluebird 5 times since 7:00 a.m. come to this one. They could have come more times, but this is all I have seen. The next to last time the dad bluebird just popped his head in the box and did not feed the baby, or I didn't see anything in his mouth to feed as he went in, but the baby quieted down for a while. The last time, he did feed the baby and checked in on him 3 times, and "bonked" his reflection in my window 3 times. He doesn't see me as the room is dark and he sees only the reflection of what is outside. I saw 1 in the backyard kid's playhouse and this one was soaking wet. It could have been that he just got wet from the heavy dew we have here today. The babies seem to love the little shed and kid's playhouse we have because they are also made of the cedar that their house is made of. My husband said that they probably think they are in a giant birdhouse - lol. I hear at least 1 in the tall trees in the woods in back of our house making the same little sounds asking to be fed. I so much wanted to see them fledge this time, but I guess I missed it again. The only thing I can hope is that I can sit where I am in the bedroom window where I have a direct view of the birdhouse opening and hope that this last one fledges today or tomorrow. I'm really not sure he'll be ready to leave until tomorrow, so I've got a long wait in store, especially since I have to be getting ready for my son's wedding.

Last year I had a baby try to fledge on day 14, he unknowingly spent the night in our garage! I put him back in the box the next morning but he and another attempted to fledge and neither could fly. I put them both back in the box and added an hole reducer so they couldn't get out but mom and dad could still feed them. The next morning I took the hole reducer off. There were four in the box and they all fledged that day (day 16), two could fly ok, one could fly but not very well and that poor little guy couldn't fly a lick. At this point I didn't want to put him back in the box by himself so I let him be. I kept finding him on the ground and would put him in a tree. I knew he was going to spend that first night on the ground and I felt bad but I did all I could. We had a terrible rain storm that night and I was sure he wouldn't make it but a week later I saw the fledglings on the wires out front and all four were there!! Some just cannot fly when they fledge. While they do need to get up into the trees if they are on the ground as long as there are no predators that would find them, they can survive. Just because they cannot fly at fledging time doesn't mean they won't ever fly, they just need more feather growth for liftoff. Donna

It's easy to see why these birds trust us like they do! Great work! Wow now there's three of us who have had fledgers in the last day! But I'm probably the only one with success on the 2nd attempt instead of first. I saw two on a branch today and Mr single dad fed one in plain sight. (Actually,high in a tree)