Thanks donnas. You can get a free Photobucket account. You simply upload your pictures; I resize the picture in Photobucket so that it fits the page well (without expanding off to the right). You copy the tag, as shown in the picture below, directly into this thread. Here's another hummer shot; I took it at the same feeder at a different angle. I've had the impatiens there since May; I can't believe I've missed such colorful shots! Too bad it was at dusk; it came out kind of grainy :( At least I have a second male. He was also perched on the fence (the same spot that my regular frequents) while my regular male was at the feeder. I was surprised that one didn't chase away the other...

In case the eggs are still OK - maybe you can try moving the nest? I'm not sure if it's possible to reach or if the parents will accept it. But most of the the time it works. I have personally made a little move/remaking a fallen open cap nests with chicks in it, and once I moved a starling nest with eggs from the hole under the roof. I moved it because the chicks were falling out of the hole and it was not the best nesting site. First I screwed the birdhouse to the wall in such a way that the hole in the birdhouse was as close as possible to the hole the birds were using. After that I moved the nest with the eggs into the birdhouse and sealed the hole under the roof. I watched the parents - they started going inside the birdhouse after a very short time. I gave them a few days to get use to the new nesting site and after that I moved it to a pole about 4' from the wall where the house was originally located. They accepted it again and raised chicks from the eggs I moved. You can probably do the same for your birds. If its fails - well, as you said, maybe it's for the best.

I definitely would not try anything once the eggs are in the nest but I'm just itching to get that focus right. I adjusted for what I thought would be the bottom of the nest material and did not think about a little higher to account for the birds height. Maybe the babies will at least be in focus initially until they grow. They looks like the first layer is a certain type of moss.

The 3 babies are still in the box this morning, a few hours short of 14 days old (they hatched in the afternoon hours). The baby birds in my pic do not hunker down, that is their normal position when they are at rest in the nest cup and at complete ease. They do gape when I inadvertently make a noise, even a soft noise. This is not like usual monitoring where the baby birds see the monitor. I know this all because I peek several times a day in my special spybox and have watched them at rest, move about, fluttering their wings, etc (I have also done monitoring the usual way) Yesterday late evening I peeked in the box, briefly turning on a faint light and saw the mother bird sleeping and fluffed up big time. It was a bit colder than the previous days at 8 degrees Centigrade. She looked very much like a mammal with very long fur, LOL.