Let's Get Started!

Tweets and direct messages about my birding-related Tweets have questioned why I don't simply blog about my backyard birds. This blog is in response to those requests, so let's get started!

A bit of background: my family recently moved to five acres in rural southeast Michigan. Having always admired and fed birds in a casual manner, I decided to become more involved with my birding hobby. In just a couple of months, our backyard has sprouted a six-box bluebird trail as well as assorted feeders -- ground, tube, sunflower, finch, oriole, hummingbird, and bluebird. I've also hung two wren nesting houses in the tree outside my temporary office (my permanent one is far down the priority list of moving in-unpacking-setting up), plus a four-armed shepherd's crook outside the master bedroom so we can watch birds from our room. A variety of seed -- thistle, songbird mix, critter mix (can't forget our family of groundhogs!), oil sunflower, fruit/nut mix, and no-mess variety -- and a couple of regional bird books and helpful tools (angled mirrow and a scraper) and I was set to kick back and enjoy my backyard birds.

How naive I was! Still am, undoubtedly, but I learn every day.

For instance, I learned how high maintenance bluebirds can be. Lovely birds, with the male so much more brighter than the female (female birds really get shorted in this regard!). Cousin to the robin, bluebirds are summer inhabitants in our area, although I've learned from the Michigan Bluebird Society (of which I've recently become a member) that some stay the winter, especially if there are boxes to roost in and an adequate food supply. No problem -- just clean out the boxes and make sure I have plenty of what bluebirds like to eat.

Bluebirds prefer mealworms. Ick. I have no problem keeping bird seed in plastic storage jugs, but keeping live worms? And not even real worms... mealworms are larvae of some sort of beetle. I ordered roasted mealworms from The Backyard Bird Company but the bluebirds -- we have six -- seemed to turn their little beaks up at these. I surrendered to their finicky diets and ordered canned preserved mealworms, which are currently in their shipping box, which arrived yesterday. Lynn at Michigan Bluebird told me that I can easily train the bluebirds by putting mealworms in a Corel-type bowl and slowly moving the bowl back daily until the birds have been trained to eat from where I want them to eat. Namely, our backyard deck, where all the other feeders are.

Of course, yesterday, my nesting male bluebird, Sean -- named so because he is very aggressive and flies at me when I try to take his photo -- was happily perched on my bluebird feeder, roasted mealworms in beak. Oh, well. Lynn also informed me that the bluebirds will be far more frequent visitors to the feeder once their eggs hatch. Which, according to my carefully monitored timeframe, should be tomorrow.

High maintenance doesn't just refer to the bluebirds' eating habits. Their nesting habits are also in need of careful monitoring. In Michigan (and in most of the eastern US, from my understanding), the Eastern bluebird has declined steadily because its natural habitat -- cavities, especially holes abandoned by woodpeckers -- have been taken up by two invasive species, the European starling and the house sparrow. Bluebird numbers have started to rise thanks to the work of birders, who put up bluebird nesting boxes or bluebird trails (a series of nesting boxes). Bluebird boxes must be ventilated, be watertight, have a small entrance hole (1.25" to 1.5"), must be mounted on poles at a height of about 5 feet off the ground, and must have a panel that opens for monitoring. Monitoring is pretty much birdie-sitting. Why monitor a wild creature? To ensure, for starters, that predators like snakes, raccoons, squirrels, and opossums don't consider the nesting box a lunch box; thus the need for pole mounts and specific heights. Baffles -- shields mounted on the poles at some distance below the nesting boxe -- also keep predators from reaching eggs and nestlings. Some bluebirders even grease the poles to keep predators away. I haven't gone that far, yet.

That takes care of the ground-based predators. There are aerial ones, too, for instance, those house sparrows. House sparrows are the little brown and white birds -- males have a black mask and "bib" -- that are seen in city parks, sidewalks, etc. You see people feeding them at zoos; you see them nesting in the spaces left between letters on storefront signs (there are a couple of sparrow nests in the K and the A of our nearest K-Mart). Sparrows are also killers who destroy bluebird eggs, break baby bluebird spines with their hard beaks, and maim and kill adult bluebirds. Why? Because the sparrows want the cavity nests... all of them. Even if they have no plans to use them. Monitoring the bluebird boxes and trails is a necessity to keep the invasive sparrows from harming and destroying the native bluebirds.

I at first found this hard to believe. Just to be safe, I made sure that my nesting boxes were slot boxes developed by the University of Kentucky to discourage sparrows, who prefer circular openings to slots, which bluebirds don't mind. Despite this, I started finding sparrow nesting materials in a couple of my boxes. The passive method of house sparrow, or HOSP, control, is to remove the nesting material as quickly as it is put in. Supposedly, the male HOSP, who is the main builder and actually bonds with the box more than with his mate, will give up and find another place to nest. It turns out I had two very persistent male HOSPs. They'd sit on the bluebird boxes, taunting me with their presence. I grew more anxious about their presence once I read about HOSP encounters on Sialis. When, two days after I'd last monitored my bluebird trail, I discovered a fully built HOSP nest with an egg in it, I knew more active measures had to be taken. My husband, J, my 12-year-old son, N, and my 6-year-old son, JTR, had all caught the birding bug upon moving out here and seeing the variety of beautiful birds. They all wanted a hand in protecting our bluebirds. N became an expert egg addler -- shaking HOSP eggs to disrupt the growth of an embryo within -- while JTR would simply yell at a HOSP whenever it came to one of our feeders (this, of course, also scared the other birds away). I showed JTR how to recognize HOSP nests: a messy, tall mixture of weeds, grass, and garbage (the HOSP nest with the eventual five eggs contained cigarette butts, carpet strands, and cassette tape). JTR learned how to tap on a nesting box, then open it to check for nests to remove.

J, in the meantime, bought himself a pellet rifle with the goal of "euthanizing" the HOSPs. According to the federal Migratory Bird Act, there are four birds that can be eliminated without breaking the law: HOSPs are one of those four (the others being the European starling, the Canada goose, and the rock, or common, pigeon). The Michigan Bluebird Society recommended in-box (to trap HOSPs inside) or outside traps (baited with seed, these keep sparrows trapped in cages). J just wanted the sparrows gone. However, that HOSP nest went from one to five eggs in the time J took to zero his pellet rifle in on the nesting box, and I was growing anxious with fear that the HOSPs would do something to the bluebirds. I suppose it didn't help matters when I took the rifle and with my first shot hit the target J had set up for zeroing.

That night, as I worked on my laptop, J came in from outside and told me to follow him. He'd snuck up on the HOSP-occupied nest box and had captured the female HOSP by tossing a bag over the box. I headed for the house to check on ways to handle captured HOSPs but, by the time I returned, J had taken matters into his own hand, literally, by using the butt of his flashlight. That night, the tally count on our kitchen white board read J: 1, HOSP: 4. The next day, J ordered the repeating sparrow trap. That evening, nine sparrows were trapped, and J dispatched them according to the instructions that accompanied the trap. We would have preferred to donate the sparrows to our local raptor recovery center, to feed injured and healing hawks and eagles, but the center did not return my calls, so J left them back near the woods for our coyotes and turkey vultures.

I disposed of the HOSP nest and eggs, and the box has been vacant since, other than being happily used by our bluebirds as a perch. To date, the whiteboard tally reads J: 16, HOSP: 5 (one got away when I was trying to free a female cowbird who followed the HOSPs into the trap). That is the only drawback of the repeating trap: sometimes native birds get in, and I have to release them. This is accomplished by putting on a thick glove (to protect my skin from avian illnesses as well as from avian beak bites), reaching in through a special trap door, and grabbing the native bird as it and the others flutter around in panic. It's not easy. Yesterday, a female red-winged blackbird got in and she left missing a number of tail feathers. I also have repeat visitors, specifically, one female cowbird (recognized by her facial markings). You'd think that after two times in the trap, she'd learn.

So, on top of monitoring the bluebird trail, I also have to watch the repeating trap, keep it baited, and free natives (the Migratory Bird Act makes it illegal to keep native bird feathers, nests, eggs, you name it). In the meantime, despite my attempts to offer the bluebirds a number of carefully chosen nesting boxes -- and there are many, some with predator guards on the openings, some with blowfly screens to protect nestlings from parasites -- the brooding bluebird couple finally selected as their nesting site the playground set that we bought our two youngest sons in May for their birthday gift.

It's the world's most expensive bluebird house.

I contacted Lynn at Michigan Bluebird to ask what to do about this. My boys love their playground, with its swings, slide, trapeze, fort, and telescope. The bluebirds had been perching on top of the swing beam, and would fly off when the boys would go out to play. Then I noticed that one of the birds kept flying into the fort roof's window, which leads to nowhere but an enclosed area built into the rooftop. In other words, a cavity. Sure enough, there was a nest. Lynn suggested letting the kids continue to play so that the bluebirds would be discouraged and use one of the trail boxes, reminding me that once the nest is active -- with eggs -- it is federally protected.

The next day, I saw two spots of pale blue in the nest. I had to make sure, of course, but every time I drew near, the bluebirds would go into this crazy wing-flapping dance, circling and swooping. The little framed panes didn't help, since neither my hand nor my camera fit. I finally had to unscrew all but the top screw, which I left as a pivot. I could then insert my camera or my angled mirror to see what was going on.

It will be two weeks ago tomorrow that I counted five blue eggs.

The bluebirds are slowly getting used to us. I check on them every two days, and they don't flap anymore but rather sit on one of the nearby nesting boxes patiently until I'm done. I've gotten pretty speedy: up the slide (the only way to access the window), check, and down in about 10 to 15 seconds. Once the nestlings have fledged, we're cleaning the area out thoroughly and putting in a plexiglass cover to keep the birds from nesting there again.

The kids are excited about the bluebird babies and are keeping count of brooding days -- they should hatch in the next day or so. I bet they're also eager to get their playground set back, too. My 16 year old has point-blank told J that J cannot possibly think of having a bonfire in our fire pit (which is about 50 feet from the playset) until after the birds have fledged, and poor J, who was so proud of his new fire ring, acquiesced. I worry that the babies are going to toddle around and fall out the window. I've become well acquainted with our county's Bird Center, just in case.

Later today I'll be setting up two of the last three boxes in my bluebird trail (for a total of 9... for now) and I suppose I'll try to set out the canned mealworms (bleccch). I bought a bird bath at 25 percent off from our local nursery yesterday. Supposedly, bluebirds love birdbaths. And that means birdbaths. They turned up their little bird beaks at the tub of water I set out for them. We'll see how that goes.

I also will need to be careful with the box furthest from our house and closest to the forest. That box has an active nest in it, too, with three eggs in it. But it's not a bluebird in that box -- it's a house wren. And that's another story!