I discovered a pair of chickadees are nesting in a birdhouse that stayed vacant all last year (except that a paper wasp nest was hanging inside). At first when I saw them going in and out a time or two I thought they might be nesting, but yesterday when I tried to see in the hole in front of the box I noticed the wasp nest and assumed they wouldn’t be nesting in the box like that. Fortunately, the wasp nest was empty so I took the nest box down and removed it. Then I discovered that the chickadees had indeed nested inside. There was a nest with five babies in it. They had probably hatched a day or two earlier.
I’m disappointed that I never saw the baby chickadees again. I peeked in the birdhouse yesterday evening after making enough noise to get the babies chirping and still not hearing anything. The nest was empty. I have no idea if the birds hatched normally and fledged or if a snake might have gotten them. Wish I had seen them flying around. I hope everything turned out OK for them.