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Blue Bird House


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2 hours ago, Ol Buck said:

THANKS FOR SHARING A MEMORY

Thanks for sharing the story Buck...

We've raised (well not actually us) several families of Bluebirds over the years

Ours mostly resemble the Eastern Bluebird (Left) not to be confused with the Indigo Buntings (right) they're much smaller like a yellow finch; Our annual Indigo's showed up today.

Haven't seen any nesting activity in the bluebird house yet...

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I read up on blue bird houses since folks say they don't get too many blue birds to use their boxes here in my part of Texas.. but there is blue birds here, so.... Bird birds are about the most particular birds there is. The box has to have the right size inside, the right wood, the right size hole to crawl through, no paint on the boxes and the exact height from the ground and most of all they are loaners..no cars buses or planes in the vicinity....and most of all no people around........ If you are ever going from Creed to Lake City in Colo. on the east side of the road for about 22 miles every fence post has a blue bird box attached to it..The fence is about 30 yards from the highway. Also from the highway they look to be about 3 1/2 to 4 foot off the ground...I tried to get wife to run out there and stand by a box so I could take a picture of them to compare the height but no picture and no trees no where but we stopped a few times and watched and every box seems to have a family of blue birds...It seems awfully lonely out there but I guess thats what they want....  

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I was talking to one of my doctors one day about blue birds. She is apparently one who does all she can to help them. She told me that sparrow  will often lay their eggs in the blue bird's nest and let the blue birds hatch them. When the eggs hatch, the sparrows grow much faster, so they eat all the food that the blue birds bring and the young blue birds end up starving to death. She regularly checks her nests, and if any sparrows have hatched, she twists its neck and removes it from the nest.

Indigo buntings are rare here. I had one in my yard a couple of years ago and it hung around for several days. Like no bird I've ever seen before with its coloring

Edited by It Was Al B
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9 minutes ago, It Was Al B said:

She told me that sparrow  will often lay their eggs in the blue bird's nest

One of the reasons the hole and opening size is critical...The 1-1/2" helps restrict sparrows from entering...also as Patch noted the interior dimensions and distance from the opening to the floor bottom is also critical.

12 minutes ago, It Was Al B said:

Indigo buntings are rare here. I had one in my yard a couple of years ago and it hung around for several days. Like no bird I've ever seen before with its coloring

For the past several years we have at least one pair and sometimes two pair. They stay for 3-4 weeks, then don't see them again until the fall for a couple of weeks. They feed on the ground as well as hanging feeders and even the finch feeders. You're right Al, they are so blue it's amazing. This morning he was feeding on the ground next to one of our male Cardinals...the red & blue was awesome. It's cool to see one (Indigo) on the Finch feeders next to a male, yellow Finch too...talk about color...

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The past couple of years I've attracted 2-3 pair of Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks...male on left, female on the right. They too stay for 3-4 weeks, then move on returning again in the fall for a couple of weeks or so. They showed up about a week ago around the same time as the Mockingbird.

I fooled the hummingbirds this year or so I thought; I had the feeders clean and filled last Friday...good thing too for the first one showed up Saturday. They usually don't return until May 10-12. I'm not seeing them through the day much, but they're hitting the feeders pretty hard...one is empty already and the other two have gone down quite a bit...I'll get the 4th one cleaned and up tomorrow.

image.png.b49266dbad7506b59fd2932b1443d52e.png   image.png.1dbab081e3f72a1096fb7e2c82125d22.png

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