Are there any other readily available foods I could be offering our little mother?

Thanks for your help.

Week old nestlings can eat mealies, especially small ones and you do her a big favor to provide those.

We also provide ours with suet nuggets, raisins, and scrambled egg, all of which are eaten daily by the adults and also fed to the chicks in the box.

Hope this helps.

Best luck to you and your Blues,

Kenn

toby

No sign of the male yet. I bought some waxworms at Petco today and a calcium spray. I could have bought crickets, but I knew I could not bring myself to "disable them." I will purchase some berries tomorrow, as they are not out yet here in NYS.

Does anyone know about how many mealworms and waxworms I should be offering the BBs per day/per feeding?

You know, our male this year was a real slacker, too - never in all our years of inviting blues to our yard, did we have one who behaved like this one. He never sang; he let the TRES take over his nest box; he failed to chase away a second pair of TRES at another nearby box; he would disappear for hours at a time, rarely fed babies, and never fed mother when she was sitting on first clutch and then trying desperately to keep first brood warm. Those first five nestlings died at one week after a couple freezing cold days.

Thanks for your encouragement. I will keep you posted.

I live not too far from Albany. My MIL lives near Atlanta (by necessity, not choice) and can barely tolerate the heat and humidity. It must be stifling in the nest boxes for the blues!

The male never returned. The nestlings were due to fledge between 6/21 and 6/23; however, on Saturday (6/19) we witnessed two babies successfully fledge in the afternoon. We could see at least one remaining in the box.

Sunday morning, I watched the mother bird entice what was the one remaining baby out of the box by teasing him with a grub and calling to him. He flew out of the box and onto the ground. He was very small, compared to the other two we had seen. The mother could not get him to fly, and he was attacked on the ground by the neighboring TRES parents! All the while, the mother BB was trying to protect him. (The TRES had also attacked one of the other fledglings on the ground the day before, but he managed to get right up and fly to the trees!)

My husband picked up the little fledgling and put him in the grass away from the TRES and closer to the hedgerow of trees, where the other fledglings were. Finally, the mother got him to fly to a low branch!

By last night and today, the mother has been making all mealworms deliveries to the tops of the trees, so I guess the little guy has been reunited with his siblings.

This mother BB is simply fantastic. What she did on her own with the fledgings was a wonder to behold!

So, that is where we are now. I'm still feeding mealworms and wax worms, but Mother still has much hard work left to do all on her own.

I had 5 nestlings. Mother blue disappeared when they were 8 days old and one died the next night.

Since then dad has taken care of the remaining four. I have given him waxworms and he loves feeding them to the young and obviously himself. They are now 10 days old going on 11, and I know it will be tough. I feel so sorry for him...he's lost 3 mates this season. For some reason female BBs can't survive very long in my neighborhood.
The afternoon is when I notciced him gone most.

I bought 6 dozen waxworms but now I realize that I want to buy them in bulk. Buying online is a tough option for me. Tobygirl, how big of quantity and price did petco have?

I'm gonna check out a pet store today for some worms. Dad devours the worms in no time. I had atleast 100 worms.

http://www.vadosbait.com/bait/waxworms.html

They are out of MN, so shipping may depend on how far you are from them but 500 waxworms are only $13.00.

Donna

Lisa suggested a local bait shop, but unfortunately there is not one around here. Rebecca suggested mail order from Sunshine, but they were all out of wax worms when I needed them. Donna's link above looks like a good source, though.

I ended up buying online from Nature's Way out of Ohio. With Priority the cost for 500 was $37, and they took 4 days. I blame the delay on the post office. Thankfully, most of them were alive, but you have to get to your post office ASAP. Nature's Way will provide a tracking number, if you request it.

Donna

Where are you located by the way? Wishing you all the best with your little bb family.

Linda