Taking+Care+of+Bluebirds

Taking care of your new BlueBird Box.


 * 1) It is best to put it on a metal pole – that sounds hard --- but here is how and it isn’t. Get a piece of rebar that is 6 -8 feet long. Drive it into the ground where you want your house. Near a treed area but not too close. Then take a piece of conduit that is 5-6 feet long and drop over the rebar – use metal clips to attach (I don’t know what these are called but you can get them at lowes – they go round the pool and attach to the wood – use the screws to tighten onto the poll. OR JUST NAIL THE BOX TO THE FENCE. The poll makes it hard for snakes to climb up and have breakfast.
 * 2) The box is cedar and all you need to do after the birds fledge is dust it out so a new nest can be built.

Here are a couple of links to help you learn more – there are also usually Bluebird societies in your area and they will be excited to advise you…. [] -- see the entire fledging process. You can see what my kids did at http://tennesseebluebirdtrails.wikispaces.com/ This site also has links to help you attract bluebirds and learn more. You can buy meal worms at pet stores --- they are expensive but a small container &8.00 or so will keep in the fridge for 6 weeks or more –and that is more than enough to supplement more than one set of fledglings. The birds are so trusting that they will let you stay around after you set out the worms and watch from a very close distance as they eat and feed the babies. Visiting the nest to check on fledglings progress….always knock first so that you don’t surprise parents on the nest, then lift it open and you can tilt the nest down so that kids can see –this will not bother the birds! Be aware that sparrows may want to nest in the box…just watch and toss out any sparrow nest – they do not look like bluebird nests (much messier) toss them out and cover the box for a few days with black bag and usually the next nesting will be bluebirds --- I told the kids it was fine to fledge chicadees, or finches --- but house sparrows are the kudzu of the bird world – you really don’t want to encourage them…they almost destroyed the bluedbirds entirely.