Bluebirds!

[John K Jordan]

Only one pair will nest in a small meadow. I could not attract any when I had two boxes up. …

This is my experience too. Fortunately our 27 acres has about 10 acres of grass fields in 5 separate areas, one field 1000’ long, and some neighboring pastures adjacent to some of our wooded areas. I’ve got a few boxes up now but this is inspires me to make some more for next year. We could probably support a couple dozen!

Another thing on my “list” is to build a couple of good bat houses. After several years lull I’m finally seeing a resurgence of bats in last two years. I love watching them cavort over the fields in the evenings. I suspect the mosquitoes don’t like them as much.

JKJ

[Dave Zellers]

Wow- so much great info! I'm thinking I may have missed the timing though. Especially since I can't drop everything and do them right now. Well it will give me time to do a better job and make a couple for my daughter for next year. She will love them.

[Ted Calver]

Don't give up too soon, Dave. They do several broods a season.

[Dave Zellers]

Yeah it's bugging me I didn't act on this sooner. I think what I'll do is knock out a couple quick ones and see what happens. A good way to use up some leftover cedar.

[roger wiegand]

You've still got a couple weeks for the first nesting, but ours routinely do three clutches in a season. When we lost one pair last year another pair moved in promptly even though it was well into May. We try to provide pretty high quality environment.

With regard to multiples, it is actually recommended, by the Bluebird Society and Cornell Nestwatch among others, to place the boxes in pairs about 10 ft apart. The bluebirds will pick the one they like and swallows or wrens will nest in the other. I've got three pairs of boxes in our meadow, typically we have one with bluebirds, two with wrens and one or two with swallows. Their territoriality doesn't extent to other species, and the second pair of birds will help defend the nesting area for both boxes. Over the last several years the bluebirds have used three of the boxes, with one a clear favorite. They also roost in the boxes over the winter-- half a dozen at a time-- so it's important to clean the boxes after the babies fledge to control mites and disease.

Another apparent rule is that the bluebirds never nest in the boxes that have nestcams in them-- but the wrens are little exhibitionists.

[Ted Calver]

Never say never. My local wildwings had two nest cams streaming live in their bluebird houses today. Just ordered some blink cams.

[David M Peters]

I made my first bluebird houses this year, the X-Box design. It was a fun break from my eternal dining chair set project!

[Mike Stelts]

We've had success using the North American Bluebird Society 2020 design, similar to what's shown below. Be aware that there are a couple minor errors in the Bluebird Society drawing. The one I rememember is that it doesn't account for saw kerf size.

This winter, I made another 63 kits for a fundraiser and helped 15 4H students build their own using eastern cedar. Something to consider is that making a batch at once doesn't take much more time than making one.

[Stan Calow]

My recollection is that they prefer the opening to face East, but I could be confusing birds. I had never ever seen any in my yard until January, where I had five sitting perched on my (heated) birdbath. They checked out a couple of houses I had up but haven't seen them since.

[Bruce Wrenn]

I made my first bluebird houses this year, the X-Box design. It was a fun break from my eternal dining chair set project!

We use a similar design developed by blue birder here in NC.. The top over hangs sides, front and back, and is covered using roll aluminum flashing, dark side out. The door is hinged at the top, and held closed at the bottom by a piece of electric wire. There is a group locally that makes and sells blue bird house at the State Employees Credit Union branches for ten bucks each. They use scraps from a stair tread manufacturer.

[Keith Christopher]

I have officially learned more about bluebirds that I thought I needed to know. Really cool stuff. I often wonder how sometimes I build bird houses and nothing nests except spiders or bees. Seem I've been doing it wrong !

[roger wiegand]

My recollection is that they prefer the opening to face East, but I could be confusing birds. I had never ever seen any in my yard until January, where I had five sitting perched on my (heated) birdbath. They checked out a couple of houses I had up but haven't seen them since.

I have boxes facing each direction, as kind of an experiment. The most used boxes face west, the one that they've used a couple of other times face south. The east and north facing boxes have never gotten a bluebird. All the boxes have been used by wrens from time to time. It's a very small experiment though, so not very meaningful.

[Stan Calow]

Wow- so much great info! I'm thinking I may have missed the timing though. Especially since I can't drop everything and do them right now. Well it will give me time to do a better job and make a couple for my daughter for next year. She will love them.

Dave, I have been advised that bluebirds along with other birds need those birdhouses in the winter too, as a place of shelter. So I put some up last fall and at least one was used by some chickadees. In fact, one of the recommendations I read was to put some sawdust or other such material in them for insulation. So another use for planer shavings.

[Dave Zellers]

So I took the advice here and put what I was doing on hold to build 4 bluebird houses. About 6 hours over two days. Two for us and two for my daughter and her family.

Bluebird houses.jpg

Her two will go out UPS tomorrow morning. My plant lights made the pic pink even tho you don't notice the pink in person.

Big thanks to all for their input!

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Good luck! Those look great! Coincidentally we had a pair in our back yard in town last week for the first time in 35 years. They were just passing thru, I watched them with binoculars for half an hour. We almost always have a pair out at the woodlot. I have not seen them yet this spring. Fingers crossed.