It's normal for males to dominate before females start to bloom. Even then you will see pretty much one female to every ten males. To the poster who thinks his male flowers are dying off: all pumpkin flowers bloom for only a few hours every morning before they die off. As for not cutting the male flowers, I disagree. I've been growing pumpkins going on ten years now and if there are no female flowers to pollinate, then I will cut the male flowers just before they start to shrivel. I've yet to get a diseased plant doing this. I cut the male flowers because they are delicious to eat. So if you don't get pumpkins, you can enjoy cooking and eating the male flowers throughout the growing season. I cut off the stem, gently rinse them under cold water and saute them after dredging through a thin whole-wheat pancake batter - yum! BTW. I should mention that pumpkins are very difficult to hand pollinate. You'r e better off putting out bee loving flowers early in the season in order to get your location established on the honey bees routes. Ants do a pretty good job also, so if you see ants around your pumpkin vines, then do not try to exterminate them. If you do want to hand pollinate, then use a very soft artists brush and lightly stroke the pistol of a male plant (you should not see tons of pollen - in this case a little is too much), then lightly stroke the stamen of the female plant (again a little is too much). Even then you are not likely to succeed with hand pollination.

I am from Rhode Island Trail is in northern RI Bluebirds are not hardy there flocks crash will high snow levels. And cold. Mild seasons they expand there local numbers. When there found dead in spring means there food supply was low and they expired. You will also see some dead threw out spring after a late cold snap the birds will just end up missing but we know it was the late cold snap. Many are weaken from the trip north once they show up and winter returns large numbers perish. It weeds out the old and sick. Ray

About a month ago, Bluesman posted on the Bird watching forum about a type of entrance hole that allows Tree Swallows to enter, but not HOSP. He said - "There is a House Sparrow resistent entrance to keep them out of Tree Swallow houses but unfortunately Bluebirds cannot get in this. It works great for Tree Swallows though. I will see if I can post a picture of it. I first heard of it from a man in Canada named Bernie Nikolai. It is simply a 7\8 of an inch tall slot that is about two inches wide. It is in a thin plate around 1\8 inch thick. The House Sparrow cannot enter this but the Tree Swallows being more streamlined and slender bodied can flatten out and get right in. It works so good." The link below is the whole thread. Here is a link that might be useful: Male Purple Martin Using My Clinger Entrance Video!

I will let you know what happens next. I went on the Sialis website to get info about this and, apparently, it sometimes happens. Sometimes it's an older female with younger males (per the website). It was interesting at first because I didn't know why the second male was always hanging around. I thought one of the males was just after the mealworms. The 3 of them always sat in a tree by my window. I couldn't quite get a handle on the second male. But I knew that it was MOST unusual. One day when I had lots of time to watch, I observed both males and the female taking turns at my mealworm feeder. They usually entered the feeder one at a time. And I was amazed to see them all going back and forth to the nest box with the worms and doing the same thing after the babies fledged.