Latest Bluebirds

[Jim Becker]

Our recent Eastern Bluebird fledglings were out frolicing in the rain today. Here are two of the four siblings...not a great picture due to conditions, including angles through glass, but you can see their "baby" feathering as well as the nice blue starting to become more evident.

[Rich Konopka]

I do have to say this, Bluebirds just don't show up and make them selves at home. Good job Jim in attracting them and making the right habitat for them.

[Nick Klaus]

Nice Picture Jim. I have to say, Bluebirds are one of my favorites. I have several houses, and they are back every year. Fun little birdies to watch! :)

[Lee Schierer]

Earlier this year I decided to evict the sparrows that annually nest in teh bird house on the side of our barn (detached garage). As it turns out a local pair of bluebirds moved in and just this past week, their four young ones left the nest. We now have at least six blue birds in the yard. We've had blue birds on our five acres every year since I started putting out bluebird houses about 20 years ago.

Even pine blue bird houses will last for 10 years or more.

Anyone know how soon after they move out you should clean out the house and make room for new tenants or a repeat of the old ones??

[Martin Shupe]

Nice pic, Jim...

After growing sparrows for a couple years, I took my boxes down. I need to build some in the Peterson design that might work better. My neighbor has some nesting in a hollow tree that we feed. We have been buying meal worms at the local bird store for $8 per 500. We put about 40 or 50 out once per day on a platform feeder and they just gobble them up. Sometimes we get a cardinal that eats them, too. Anyone know a cheaper source of mealworms?

How about purple martin's? I bought an expensive martin house a couple years ago because, according to one website, it had the highest nesting success rate. Well, if they are talking about sparrow nests, I would agree. I found out later the other brand has a sparrow trap, which would have been much more useful to me. We do have martin's in the area, just not in my martin house. :(

Barn swallows...we have some on our front proch, in a corner above the door. When they started building, we decided to leave them alone so the kids to could watch them raise their young. Good for educational value, bad for the mess on the front porch. Oh well, we can live with the mess. I'll clean it up after they leave.

Hey Jim, does that fancy camera of yours allow you to type the captions on the photos? I have to get one of those!

[Jim Becker]

Sparrows, particularly "house sparrows" which are not native to the US, are the one big problem with keeping bluebirds...other than snakes. There are a number of ways that people thwart them. This time, we used a bunch of foil streamers over the house once the parents were sitting on the eggs. We do plan on adding a snake guard to each of our two houses as we did find a snake in the back house not long after the chickadees fledged.

No, the camera doesn't type captions. Photoshop Elements does, however, with a little help from my fingers.

Barn Swallows, while messy, are really good to have around as they are voracious insect eaters like their relatives, the martins. They will also get used to you so are easy to observe. There is a great article on them in the current issue of Birder's World including some very nice pictures. You can also experience them up close and personal with a tour through Bill Grumbine's barns! Lots of them. Barn. Barn Swallows. That makes sense!