I've been lucky enough to "host" chickadees for the last 6 years. The first year it was a little war between the bluebirds and the chickadees. The bluebirds have always, w/o a single exception, used the back yard nest box. They already had five eggs and incubation had started when the chickadees started nest building in a front yard box. The bluebirds were having "none of that" and constantly harassed them by going in and out of the dee nest box. I was advised to add a 1 1/8 or 1 /14th inch hole reducer to keep the bluebirds OUT and I did and things were fine for both the bluebirds and the dees. I have bluebirds in the back yard right now and the dees have laid their third egg today in the front yard box. So far, the bluebirds are not bothering the dee box but if they do I'll add the reducer again. I agree with Elly, do no disturb that nest. It's possible the dees will return or that they have and you've just missed seeing them. While they do incubate every day it's possible they have not started incubating yet. Most times females do start incubation the day before, day of or day after the last egg is laid but not 100% of the time so it's premature to think they won't return. I would recommend that you add a reducer to keep the bluebirds out of the box. If, after that, the chickadees don't come back for a full week then I'd remove the nest and eggs and the reducer. But, be sure you've had a chance to look at the box for a full hour before assuming it's been abandoned.

It's been a while, but here is an update! Wrens did appear the day our chickadee nest was emptied, so we are guessing they were responsible. The mother chickadee spent one more night on her empty nest before abandoning it. We ended up putting duct tape over the hole so the wrens couldn't use it and boy did that make them mad! I've learned that we may have played a role in the chickadees demise. Three years ago chickadees nested in our yard, but the next year wrens did. We kept removing the sticks, but they promptly replaced them. The wrens are hard workers, I'll give them that. Finally we left the wrens alone and they completed a nest, etc. From what I've read, once you let wrens nest in your yard, they become very territorial of it and it is almost impossible for chickadees to have a successful nest there. Last year we put up two very low bluebird boxes and the wrens built dummy nests in them. Also we had put a few wood chips in our nest box. I think the reason chickadees like a box with wood chips is that it mimics an old woodpecker's nest. If woodpeckers successfully nested in a spot, there is probably a higher chance it will be successful for chickadees. So maybe we gave them a false sense of security. Well, we live and learn. Every once in a while now I will be outside and I'll hear two chickadees calling and they will fly close to me and flit all around and it makes me really happy. We now have flickers nesting in an old woodpecker hole in our birch tree. Starlings recently fledged from that hole, and there have been a few brawls, but I've got my fingers crossed. A few times I have gone out and banged pans to frighten the starlings away and it seems to work! Good luck with your nest boxes Donna! Thanks for the pep talk, it was nice to talk with someone who could relate! Annie

Don't feel guilty, although I know that's difficult. My MIL sold her house - we convinced her she really couldn't take care of it by herself - and moved in with us. We're a mere 25 miles across the Bay Bridge (San Francisco CA to Oakland CA) from where she lived for 40 years. She can still take the subway and visit her few remaining old friends. But she's been living with us for three years, and has yet to make a single friend in our (very nice) neighborhood on her own. We have her going to exercise classes and brain classes at the local senior centers, but when on her own she makes absolutely no effort to interact with anyone but her old friends in San Francisco. A lot of older people seem to be like her. I have to keep reminding myself that my idea of old age is one of my former bosses and his wife - both active, independent, mentally sharp, a great zest for life, who are always widening their circle of friends to include people younger than themselves. What a world of difference attitude makes at any age, but especially as you get older!

A silver chalk pencil ought to mark it, but you have lots of other choices, too. Just don't set any marks in with an iron, and afterward rinse well in cold water without soap first. I happened to mark with a Fons and Porter chalk pencil, and I covered the marks with pieces of Glad Press-N-Seal until I was ready to quilt that section. Some of the blue water erasable markers have bad stories around about how they show back up over time as brown marks that won't come out, but other people say it's because the quilt wasn't rinsed thoroughly, only dampened so that the pigment sank down into the batting. I bet you won't have that problem here with a child quilt. And several ladies with good experience on here use the Crayola super washable children markers--like the ones you buy at Kroger. Yellow dyes tend to stick, so to be safest avoid yellow although I never heard anything bad per se about the yellow Crayola. Just make sure you get the super washable ones, they say. It's up to you how many arcs to put in your fan--4 to 8 seems to be common, and spaced an inch or 1 1/2 inches apart. The story is that this pattern was easy for women to mark as they went, and the marks shouldn't get bigger that what you could make from pivoting from your elbow. :) I don't know if that's really true, but it's a sweet little story. You basically are laying down quarter circle arcs, so you might try poking around in your tupperware tops to see what kind of free and easy circle templates you can come up with. The kitchen has LOTS of circles. For that matter, you can make your own string template by tying little circles knotted in a sturdy string at your chosen distances. Then you anchor the end with a pin or something, and put your pencil in each circle in turn, hold it straight up and down, so that you're using it like a compass. Whatever you decide, here's a nice little picture of somebody getting fancy with double lines. ;) Here is a link that might be useful: