Over the past few years (since I moved back from Texas) I have been buying a few cedar blue bird houses and every year we have several pairs of blue birds. Unfortunately all too often we find dead baby blue bird.even our friends 20 miles away thought about taking their houses down because they are tired of finding dead babies. In most cases blow fly larva were found under the nest.
I have read about adding bay leaves under the nest, changing the nest out.which you are not supposed to do even though it works and I have tried the wire mesh thing which kind of worked. The problem with the wire mesh idea is you can't effectively install it high enough above the bottom of a stand blue bird house. So this winter I have built all new blue bird houses adding about 5 inches to the height but installing the wire mesh where the bottom would normally be. This way the nest is far enough above the floor so if and when the blow flies fall to the bottom they won't have anyway to get back to the nest. In addition I removed all the existing blue bird houses and reduced the hole size so blue birds will no longer be able to use them. We put those in the woods for chickadees, wrens, nuthatch, etc. So once and for all I will find out if the wire mesh idea really works. I will keep you posted. Julie & Kurt Broken Road Farms www.BrokenRoadFarms.com -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
