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Bluebird eggs not fertilized

10 years ago

After 3 years, I have finally attracted an Eastern Bluebird pair to my Gilbertson boxes in my yard. They arrived early in the season and have tried unsuccessfully to hatch 2 clutches of 5 eggs each. I have observed them mating once, and they appear to be attentive to each other and their eggs. I have a modified wren guard on their boxes. After nearly a month of waiting, I finally took the unhatched first 5 into the audubon society and they candled them and said they only developed a day or two, if at all. -- air pockets and just a yellow yolk in liquid. Likely unfertilized. Now, after carefully inspecting their second clutch after about 10 days, it looks like the same thing has happened to these eggs.

Does anyone have any insight into this? Do I simply have an infertile male?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Kate

Comments (2)

tmann05
10 years ago
Hi Kate,

Congrats on attracting a pair of blues. Please don't remove the new clutch of eggs. It could be that the male is infertile or a problem with the female. She is incubating right? A member on bluebird nut cafe had eggs hatch on day 18 so anything is possible.

I would suggest you join the bluebird nut cafe and post your question there, you will get much more assistance with this problem and any others you encounter. Hope to see you there.

http://bluebirdnutcafe.yuku.com/

-Tyler
kendra2003
10 years ago
Since they're not ready to hatch yet, I'm not sure why you think they are infertile? Did you candle them? If you know how to candle eggs and these are empty at day 10, then they're probably infertile. Otherwise, wait a while longer and see it they hatch. I had my first clutch of the season not hatch. I candled the eggs after they were a week overdue and they were empty. Their second clutch all six hatched. The third clutch two hatched, and three eggs did not.
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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!
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