Congrats on your eggs! www.sialis.org has all the nesting timetables and much much more.... A must read if your goint to host nest boxes! Good Luck!

Sometimes it takes 4 or 5 days after the nest is built for the blues to start laying eggs. I strung fishing line on either side of the entrance hole. I used 4 tacks...two on the top on either side of the hole and two on the bottom. Just wrap the fishing line around the tacks on either side of the hole, close to the opening but of courses not blocking it. I found out how to do it online. I leave it there all of the time. That is supposed to help. I also use a sparrow spooker after the first egg is laid. I have 3 baby blues now.

Hi Kathleen- I'll address you since the other posts are old. I am so very sorry that you have experienced this. Did you read what the responses were to the older post of one that lost a bluebird on the nest? I would just repeat everything that they said. If absolutely no sign of injury, I would suspect lawn pesticides, but considering what happened to the 1st person that posted & didn't see signs of injury on her bluebird, it did turn out to be house sparrows. I would highly suspect this. Do you think the female is dead too? If so, again I would be suspicious of HOSP. Answering your question, the male would not starve himself, nor is he able to brood eggs. If the female died too, the eggs wouldn't have hatched because the female is the one to incubate the eggs. She has a brooding patch on her lower abdomen that the male doesn't have. If she is alive, she may not be returning to nest because of the failed nest situation, especially if there was foul play. Make sure you know that she is not returning before removing the nest & eggs. If she is alive, she will probably try to find a new mate. Without repeating too much, make sure your birdhouse is on a pole with a baffle & put a sparrow spooker up after the 1st egg. If you know for sure that the nest has been abandoned & you don't get any activity, you may want to change the location of the box (birdhouse). If you immediately get a house sparrow setting up shop, then you'll know that was most likely the culprit. Again, if female is not returning, now would be the time to get a Van Ert trap for your house to trap the male & female HOSP. If you do, make sure you are monitoring every hour if possible so you don't trap a native bird. They can die in there if without food for too long. One of the previous posts left a website for the Van Ert trap. Again, the previous posts left great advice for your situation. This site is not as active as it used to be for bluebirders, so you may want to post to bluebirdnut.com. Lots of bluebird experts are on that site like this one used to have. That's where I go whenever I need advice. BTW, I lived in Atlanta for ten years (live in AL now). Very sorry to hear about your bluebird tragedy. Hope you'll have another pair come for a future nesting, but definitely get that sparrow spooker!

After watch a female bluebird sitting for 23 days of incubating 5 eggs (have a nest cam, too), a house wren pecked 2 of the eggs and threw them out of the box. I found one at the base of the box and it had a dead embryo in it. It had all its 'bird parts' but would not have hatched after all that time. I didn't find the 2nd one thrown out but I did take out the remaining 3. The dead embryo and the 3 eggs I took into the house stunk like dead fish! That's after I opened them, I don't know if you could smell that though the shells or not. The other 3 eggs were not developed past maybe 24-48 hours. I have no explanation as to why these eggs did not develop. If the parents don't mind, you could take the eggs out and smell them to see if they smell rotten. If they do, I'd take them out of there. The parents may be confused at first but it might be better to help them move on to the next brood. I left the nest in the box hoping that Mama Blue will be stimulated to try again. I'd leave the nest there if I were you. Good luck, I know your pain. Linda...