Blue Beauties: Meet The Eastern Bluebird

It’s easy it is to attract these cheerful native birds to your yard with the right birdhouse and plantings
by Mike Dunn

Bluebirds are creatures that everyone seems to love. They’ve had songs written about them (“Bluebird” by Paul McCartney & Wings), famous poems (“The Bluebird” by Emily Dickinson), and even sayings about them that have been in our culture for generations (“The Bluebird of Happiness” from a 1934 song by Edward Heyman). My favorite quote about these beautiful birds is from Henry David Thoreau, the famous naturalist and essayist of the 1800s: “The bluebird carries the sky on its back.” Indeed, the sky-blue color of the male Eastern bluebird helps make this species one of our most beautiful and beloved.

My real interest in bluebirds started when I began creating teacher workshops as part of a program with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. We traveled to schools helping educators learn about their environment and feel comfortable taking their students outside on their school grounds to teach all sorts of subjects, from science to art. With grant support from the National Science Foundation, we also helped schools create mini-habitats as a readily accessible learning resource.

An important part of a bird habitat was providing a nest box for bluebirds. This might be another reason bluebirds are so loved: they have an affinity for bird boxes that we make for them. They often nest in hollow trees and old fence posts, but have learned to seek out nest boxes.

My go-to source for bluebird boxes for schools was a fascinating man named Jack Finch, who lived in Bailey, North Carolina. Mr. Jack, as he was often called, was a farmer, pragmatic naturalist and a dedicated lover of bluebirds. Concerned about the decline of his favorite bird, Mr. Jack started the nonprofit Homes For Bluebirds in 1973, which built and sold tens of thousands of boxes stamped with the company name. His design included a 1.5-inch diameter entrance hole (small enough to keep out competitors like European Starlings), a metal guard around the hole (to prevent woodpeckers, squirrels and starlings from enlarging the entrance), and a sturdy roof with an overhang and ventilation holes. Mr. Jack claimed that he didn’t really design the box, the bluebirds did; he tried many different designs and settled on the one that the bluebirds preferred.

A powerful memory from my early museum career was putting up one of his boxes with a group of teachers one spring. As we walked back toward the building, one of the teachers exclaimed, “Look, there’s a bluebird on the box already!” That is often the case. If you put up a box at the right time of year, generally around February or March, bluebirds in the area will soon check it out. Mr. Jack passed away in 2006, but my durable Homes for Bluebirds nest boxes still have bluebirds nesting in them every year.

As I was writing this in February, the bluebirds were already visiting the box in our side yard. They typically begin nesting sometime in March or April, bringing in pine needles or dried grass as nest material. Both parents help build the nest, and once it has been constructed, the female lays one light blue (occasionally white) egg each day until there are four to six eggs. After the last egg is laid, she begins to incubate them. They hatch in about 13 to 14 days within a few hours of each other. Both parents feed the young, bringing in a variety of insects and spiders and the occasional small lizard. Waste from the baby birds is contained in a gelatinous fecal sac that is carried away by the parents and dropped far away from the nest so as to not attract predators.

Young leave the nest 17 to 20 days after hatching. On the day they fledge, the parents may sit nearby with some food item, gently calling to encourage their young to leap out into the world. The speckled young are hesitant, some taking many minutes to make that first flight. Parents continue to feed the young birds for two to three weeks after fledging. The male may take on more of this responsibility as the female starts another nest. Bluebirds often have two or three broods each nesting season.

Eastern bluebirds feed on a variety of insects, spiders and fruit. I’ve watched our bluebirds bring in earthworms, beetle grubs, caterpillars and spiders to feed their ravenous young. In colder weather, they feed on berries from various native trees and shrubs. They seem especially fond of Red cedar, American holly and Flowering dogwood berries. In fact, Mr. Jack sought out certain dogwood trees from yards in the region that produced abundant berries and cultivated them on his farm to sell. He is the only person I ever met that collected dogwood berries, packaged them in sawdust to prevent fungal growth, and refrigerated them to sell as bluebird food. And it worked! In winter, I would pull a few berries out of the container, place them on my deck rail and have several bluebirds show up every morning. The most I ever saw on my deck was 14, during a January snow.

Other foods you can provide for bluebirds include suet, peanut butter (in winter and mixed with seed), mealworms (fresh or dried) and seed packages that contain specialty ingredients like sunflower chips, suet chips and dried fruits such as cranberries and cherries. Of course, the easiest way to attract a diversity of birds is to provide a yard with many native plant species, a water source and suitable sites for shelter and nesting.

If you want to attract bluebirds, there are many great nest-box designs on the market or you can easily build your own. The North American Bluebird Society (nabluebirdsociety.org) has a nice fact sheet with lots of nest-box recommendations. You will be rewarded with the joy of seeing and hearing one of our most beautiful songbirds. I’ll leave you with something Mr. Jack told me on one of my visits: “What really makes my day is to get up early in the morning, just as the sun comes up, and hear bluebirds.”