Expert: Roger Lederer - 5/19/2009

Question
Hi!  We have a nesting box that has the rotating door so to speak.  You can move the entrance from top to bottom depending on the season.  House sparrows have built a nest in it but tonight when I happened to look up I saw the entrance damaged, chunks of wood on the ground and the "rotating door" pushed sideways.  I opened the box and saw several babies sleeping.  So we closed everything up and used duct tape to keep the rotating door in place.  What type of bird/animal would do this??  It was later at night  so I am worried that the parents might have been killed in the attach as they were nowhere around that I could tell.  At that time of night (7:30ish) would someone not be on the nest or do they leave to eat at all times?  Thanks for your time and input.  Anne

Answer
Any kind of predator could be responsible for what you saw, but I suspect it might be a rat or squirrel. When a predator tries to get in the box like that there is not much the parent birds can do except try to scare the predator away but the parents endanger themselves by doing so , so they just leave. Usually one parent will be on the nest all night, but that might not be until dark. They will leave to eat anytime during daylight hours.