Hi Folkvictorian,
I'm so sorry about your baby bluebirds. I have had a hard time getting and keeping bluebirds in my houses. One year a rat snake slithered into the house and ate the babies, next year a house wren kicked the bluebirds out. I know that house sparrows and house wrens are the two birds that will go into bluebird houses and kill the babies. I'm not sure that they will then take them out though. They might. There is a website called sialis.org (i think) that gives you a lot of info about bluebirds and their predators. Have the parents left the nest?

After checking sialis.org, it sounds like it was a house sparrow. Do you have house sparrows in your area? I think they are pretty much everywhere. They will kill the babies and remove them from the house. There are deterrents you can make/buy to put on your bluebird house AFTER the female has laid her eggs. For sparrows, I think it is called a sparrow spooker, which is basically strips of mylar hanging from something, a wire, or anything, above the house. The movement of the mylar keeps sparrows away but if the mother has laid eggs, she will still go in the house. For wrens, there are wren-guards which put a piece of wood in front of the entrance hole projecting out a few inches. The mother bluebird will go in behind this piece of wood but wrens won't. But you shouldn't put these up until after eggs have been laid or the bluebirds might leave the house. Both house sparrows and wrens are smaller than bluebirds and can fit into the entrances to bluebird houses. I have a baby bluebird in my bluebird house right now. It seems to be only one, though, which is really weird. But I am always watching that house to make sure nothing gets the baby! Attracting and keeping bluebirds is a challenge!

It's so sad, but that's nature. We had a cardinal nesting in a hanging basket. She went way past the normal incubating period and I had a feeling something was wrong. When she finally abandoned her nest I found it held 3 eggs.

Then just last week another cardinal started building a nest in the arbor. I never noticed her incubating and yesterday I found one of the eggs on the ground below the arbor. It was open and still very fresh. Pulled out the ladder to look in the nest and saw a single egg. Today it too was on the ground nearby in the garden. Have no idea what did it or why.

Thanks, everyone! Gail, that's an incredibly interesting website. We never knew that house sparrows will enter another bird's house to destroy eggs and kill babies -- and we have tons of house sparrows around here. We've guarded against snakes, raccoons, and other birds such as crows, but the house sparrow threat is new to me. Thank you so much for recommending that website! Back to the drawing board!

Attracting bluebirds was easy...we just put up a house and they found it. We've since put up several more around the property. How strange that your nest holds only one baby, Gail. One of the interesting things about bluebirds is that the first batch of babies each year hang around and help the parents feed the second batch of babies. I hope you have good luck!

Sorry to hear about your babies, Natal. It's been a dramatic spring for our birds all around. Barn swallows had built a mud nest under the porch roof for years and this spring a phoebe took over that spot and built her nest there. (The mud nest collapsed last summer when the babies fledged by pushing off from the edge.) This morning I looked out and a barn swallow was asleep on a perch near the grass/moss phoebe nest, her head tucked into her wing. The turf wars continue, I guess.

Folkvictorian - do you clean out the house between the two batches of babies? Some suggest that you should but I'm afraid I'll lose my bluebirds if I do that. Others say you can leave it till the end of the nesting season. I hope I get a second batch of babies - I am really enjoying watching them each day.

Folkv and gail: After two years of successful use of our bluebird houses by bluebirds, we then had very aggressive English/house sparrows taking over the houses as you described. Our State DEP told me to remove the eggs the sparrows layed in the houses to discourage them, since they are invasive species. I ended up removing 4 different clutches of eggs from each house. As soon as I would remove the eggs, more were laid. I sadly took down the houses after two years of that. Those sparrows are incredibly aggressive and fertile!

We have terrible luck with bluebird houses. Each year they nest, we rarely see babies. Just last week I found egg shells in our garden, which is near the bluebird house. Thankfully, we have tons of bluebirds that nest in nearby trees. I should just take the bluebird house down.

tina

I bought a new bluebird house last year after the snake ate the babies and put this house up in a large open space in my yard. The other house was on a tree along the forest line - more susceptible to predators. Supposedly house wrens aren't crazy about nesting in open spaces but not so - as soon as I had the house up, one moved in. Actually, I don't think he moved in, he just put a nest in the house and lived elsewhere. House wrens will fill every one of your birdhouses with twigs, and not live in them, just to be territorial. I finally gave up and left it alone. But this year I have two bluebirds in the house and they visit my feeder, which is on my kitchen window, all day long.

Gail, I never thought we should clean out the nesting boxes but DH does that each spring and as I learned today (!), on the sialis.org website, it should be done after each set of babies fledges and also if a nest fails to produce babies. The website says the parents may try again within 1-7 days after they lose a brood. (I always figured that where there are no boxes, the bluebirds find other natural cavities in which to build nests and no-one cleans THOSE out, right? I stand corrected!)

Golddust, to save $, we've always built our own bluebird nesting boxes according to simple instructions we've found on the web. The only problem is that we were naive enough to encourage ALL birds, so we built all sorts of cavity boxes and have now unknowingly encouraged the house sparrows, too. Ug. Thanks so much for the drsfostersmith website; the sparrow-resistant bird house looks fantastic and I'm sure that's the type of thing we'll get from now on!

Don't just remove HOSP eggs; addle them and put them back. If you only take them out and toss them the HOSP will simply lay more and more and more, taking up real estate and eventually producing more HOSP.

But addling the eggs (hold them firmly and shake VERY vigorously, to break up the contents without breaking the shell, then put them back in the nest) means the pair will continue to sit on their bad eggs rather than laying more . The net result is fewer HOSP.

We live too far out in the country for HOSP or Starlings, (they are mostly "urban/suburban" pests) but at our old place closer to town, my favorite HOSP control was a BB gun. The males are especially aggressive and were a favorite target, but either sex made great fertilizer for the roses.

Thanks, Littledog, that's an excellent suggestion. DH and I went around to many boxes last night and got rid of several empty nests. I ordered a HOSP trap today....expensive but we really need it. Our current count of lost babies and eggs is 11 and that only represents what we've seen. Who knows how many others have been lost. I now understand why I found a dessicated adult tree swallow body in one of our nest boxes about 2 weeks ago. The male HOSP are incredibly aggressive and it's just sickening to think of them cornering adult birds inside the nest boxes and killing them. Thank you again for the excellent advice.

OMG I FOUND A BABY BIRD ON THE GROUND PROBABLY JUST BORN SO I PUT IT BACK INTO NEST I CHEcKED ON THEM TODAY AND THE OTHERS WERE DEAD, WHAT HAPPENED!?