My Bluebird Year
I always loved birds, but I really only started truly watching and documenting them for the past 15 years. Over that time, I’ve been able to photograph 85 different species of birds right here on our property. But there was one bird that alluded me all these years…the Eastern Bluebird.
I know many folks around me here in Maine spot them all the time, but nary a one had grace my presence. I’m thinking that’s because they like open fields, and well, I live in the woods. Then one day in the late spring of 2023, while I was doing the dishes and gazing out the window, this majestic blue bird landed ever so briefly on my deck (where I have my bird seed setup). I couldn’t believe it…finally, an Eastern Bluebird has come on over!! Then I blinked and it was gone. But the very next day I ran to my local hardware shop and bought a bag of mealworms in anticipation. I looked and looked for weeks afterwards hoping to spy a glimpse, but nothing. Weeks turn into months and I figured that one brief sighting was going to be it and I let my bluebird dream fly away.
Flash-forward to an incredible nasty three-day snowstorm last March. The weather was brutal and my deck was overflowing with bird activity noshing away on as much seed and suet as they could. Once again, I was doing dishes and gazing out the window, when all of a sudden not just one bluebird showed up, but two! Two!! I ran as fast as I could to find that bag of mealworms I bought almost a year prior. As soon as I set the worms out, 4 bluebirds appeared, then 6, and before I could even take it all in, we had a good 10 bluebirds on my deck feasting away. Sure it was a blizzard, but my husband has a plow, so out he went back to that hardware store to stock up on more mealworms!
After all the snow finally wrapped up for spring, only a pair of Bluebirds remained. That lovely pair went on to raise three different broods of babes over the course of last summer. I kept them in endless mealworms and they treated me by allowing me to watch their beautiful babes grow up, learn to fly and flit all about my garden. When they weren’t gobbling down mealworms, they were bathing in our watering tubs and perching on our trellises. It was, and continues to be, everything!! Just pure joy!
As a new steward to these magnificent creatures, I’ve learn a few cool things about them:
While Bluebirds do love a good open field, they also like to build their nests in abandoned woodpecker holes…which our woods are chock full of.
Live mealworms are their favorite, but dried do in a pinch. The larvae of the Black Soldier Fly is another great nutrition-packed snack for them.
Bluebirds are platform feeders, which means they aren’t fans from eating from bird feeders, rather they like to nosh on a flat surface.
By the 1970s, the Bluebird population was in such a decline, birders feared possible extinction. But thankfully to all the good citizen scientists, people started putting up Bluebird houses and offering supplemental feed (like mealworms), and the population rebounded.
“A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.”