Michelle took advantage of our most recent sunny day to clean our bird houses. Ideally, we would clean them every winter, to prepare them for use in the spring and summer. She told me she had lost track of the last time she cleaned them, which added to the questions raised by what she found inside one of them.
She found a clutch of eggs in the bird house over the garden. This house is the only one we know birds have used in the past (see New Tenants). The last time a bird couple used it, things apparently didn’t go so well.
Eggs, probably chickadee, left in the birdhouse (Photo: Michelle L. Zeiger).
We can’t tell what might have happened to make the birds abandon the clutch. We suspect it might have something to do with the fiberglass used as nesting material. We don’t know if the abandoned eggs kept other birds from using the box or not. We’re almost positive that no birds used the house last summer, perhaps this is why?
The houses are now clean and ready for new tenants. The abandoned eggs now decorate the green house.
