Eastern Bluebirds (and babies) in our backyard!
Greetings, and welcome to our little slice of bluebird paradise! Our family’s home in Holly Springs, North Carolina looks out onto a small backyard that gets a 
lot of bird traffic. We have always enjoyed feeding the chickadees, titmice, wrens, cardinals, and goldfinches we saw, but our favorites were the infrequent flashes of cobalt blue…the amazingly beautiful bluebirds. So, a few months back we mounted our very first bluebird box and quickly had a pair of Eastern bluebirds move in. We were thrilled!
A short time later we had a nest and then five eggs, and on April 15, our first baby bluebirds hatched. We monitored the box each morning and took pictures (up until day 12) and a week after the cutoff date, they fledged. Sadly only two made it. We’re not quite sure what happened to the other three, but we are very excited to have a family of four in the backyard!
And now the process is starting again! We have a second brood underway from the same parents. Five Carolina blue eggs are in the nest box and being well tended to by the mama.
Today is day seven, so the next round of hatchings is coming up possibly within the week. I invite you to join our family in this fun process of watching baby Eastern bluebirds hatch, grow, fledge (fly away from the nest) and get accustomed to their new surroundings. They are a treat to watch, and they’re quite cute, too!
My goal is to make this a blog with almost daily posts during the work week, and then I’ll catch you up on weekend developments on the following Monday. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Dave
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Comments
Your pictures are beautiful. I just saw one of those bluebird boxes where you can open the door on the side and there’s a pane of glass that allows you to peer into the nest inside. It’s so cool.
I have one of those boxes…it’s very cool to keep an eye on babies without disturbing them. Got it at Lowes last year…very cheap!
To move the fern or not to move the fern…it is possible to move a nest without confusing the parents if you do it very slowly over several days, maybe a foot at a time (if you can engineer it). My parents successfully moved a swallow nest in this way. However, if you already have nestlings, disturbing things past a certain date (day 12 for bluebirds) can cause them to fledge early (and possibly become pet food…we saw this happen to some house finches…cats are very quick once a bird hits the ground). It’s up to you, but I think I’d leave the nest alone.
Incredible, this is just such a wonderful blog! I have a son and his family that just moved to Mooresville, is that close to you? I hope to see so many different birds there, when I visit! Do you see the Red-Headed Woodpecker?
They used to habitate here, however, are not spotted at all anymore. Keep us posted on your backyard activity!
Aunt B, thank you for the visit and comments! It is high praise coming from you and your excellent blogging work! We have just in the last month seen the Red-Headed Woodpecker…beautiful bird, but I didn’t get any pics. He landed on our deck when my wife and son were there, but he is definitely not a regular customer. Downy woodpeckers are more common for us. As for Moorseville, I’m not sure. We are just outside of Raleigh in Holly Springs. Thanks again so much!
Hi All - we’re in Belews Creek (near Winston-Salem) and our second brood of the season hatched yesterday. There seems to be a shortage of mealworms - our regular source won’t have any until the end of this month (June) and I don’t want to keep buying the outrageously expensive but tiny worms from the pet store. Is anyone out there feeding something other than mealworms?
THANKS
Tricia, ours are also eating sunflower chips and peanut halves…I break the halves again, so they’re really peanut quarters. All four of ours seem to enjoy those when the mealworms run out.
My son made me a really neat birdfeeder attached to a pole about 8 feet high. There are four arms, so I have lots of feeders hanging from the arms. I had a birdhouse, the hole was cut for bluebirds. I didn’t have a place to put the birdhouse, so I just positioned it on the end of the feeder. Next thing I know I have bluebirds in it. I do not know for sure when the eggs were laid, but it has been a couple weeks for sure. Today while I was sitting in my swing close to the feeder, the birdhouse fell off. I picked it up and put it back in place. ( I will get mounted better) There was one egg on the ground and one side of it was thin and you could see the baby bird through the membrane. I couldn’t tell if there were any more eggs in the nest. The next thing I knew the mother bluebird flew into the house and flew out with an egg in her mouth. She flew up into the top of a really high pine tree. She repeated this three times and seemed to go the the same place in the tree. Had she built another nest or were the eggs bad and she was getting rid of them. Any ideas. I live just south of Atlanta, GA.
Clara, wow…I guess it is possible that the mother bluebird was moving the remaining good eggs to a different nest spot, but I’m wondering how she could carry one without cracking it slightly or pecking a hole in it so she could grab it with her mouth. I’m betting the eggs were cracked from the fall and she was just getting them out of the nest box. When ours leave the nestbox with fecal sacs (waste) from the nestlings, they still fly to the same spot it seems. Maybe they’re creatures of habit for where they dump things.
Anyway, the key question is, is she still coming frequently to the nestbox? If not, then maybe your different nest theory is correct. Or it could mean that the eggs were all broken, and now that they’ve been removed, there’s no need to go to the nest anymore. If she is still going frequently inside the box, there’s a chance that there was one more egg that wasn’t damaged and could be hatching soon. Hope this helps…please let me know what happens!
I have had a blue bird box on our deck for years. We get many bluebird families a year and it is great to watch them come and go. A couple of days ago there was a down pour and guess some wind. The top of the birdhouse blew open. I really do not think the baby bluebirds were ready to fly from the nest. Is it possible the daddy and mommy bluebird got the babies out and put them in a safe place. I don’t want to think the worst.
I just love this time of the year watching them come and go and then flying away until the next ones come again. They are so beautiful to watch.
Marilyn, so sorry about your bluebirds! It all depends on the age of the nestlings. If they were more than say 13 to 14 days old, then it’s possible they could have flown (low) to a safe spot with the parents, but baby bluebirds don’t usually fledge until day 17 or 18. There’s probably a good chance that they went to the ground and are in hiding under the deck or in a nearby bush. The parents should give you a clue. I hope they’re okay!
I have had three bluebird sets of babies this year, two broods from the same pair. The first pair had 2 fledglings (2 eggs did not hatch), and then they rebuilt a nest and had 5 eggs (1 did not hatch). All but one has left the nest since yesterday and a parent has been feeding it today (Whew). My second pair of bluebirds nested in a box I hung on the deck and laid 5 eggs — four of them made it. I did read that when the fledgings leave the nest the parents make sure they are hidden for about 7-10 days until they get acclimated to their world. I have seen none of my babies yet, but hear them in the trees in the back of our yard, about 100 feet away. So I do not know how many actually made it.
Kim, it sounds like a fun bluebird season for you! That’s been my experience with our broods so far as well…the babies fledging and then completely disappearing for almost two weeks (and the parents being scarce in that time as well). This weekend I read from one source that calls that period “Bluebird 101,” where the dad especially educates the fledglings all about their new world. Neat!
We had our first bluebirds fly away out of the nest yesterday
morning 8-7-08. I miss the chirping sounds that they made every
morning. I am wondering if I should leave the nesting material
just as it is, and let the mama take care of it when she returns.
About what time of year will they return? I live in Northern Calif.
Lynn, I am with you on missing these wonderful birds once they leave. There are mixed opinions about removing the old nest, but most sources I’ve read say to take it out once the babies have fledged. One source even recommends hosing out the box and leaving it open to dry. The old nests can contain ants and also blowfly larvae. We cleaned out our nestbox after the first round of baby bluebirds fledged, and the mama rebuilt a second, fresh nest for her next brood.
Can’t say for sure when your bluebirds will return, but they may not have left for good yet. The whole family seems to disappear for the first week or two after the fledglings leave the nest, but often they will return if you have been feeding them. Still it is late in the season now, and ours seem to be gone for good.
Thank you Dave for your message. I did see one of the baby birds this afternoon and I think the mother. She sat on top of the nestbox and
“waved her wings” up and down like she use to and was chirping. I haven’t
been putting out anything for them to eat. Will they eat birdseed. I
did put some water out though. I will send the two pictures I took of
the babies when they first peeked out the opening of the nestbox.
The birds that have used the nestbox have pecked at
the opening and made it larger. I was wondering if
I should repair the size of the opening or leave it
the way it is? Can you tell me the size that the
hole on the nestbox should be? I don’t want other
birds to beable to get in the nestbox when the eggs
are in it.
Lynn, fun! You got yours back already! The baby bluebirds are very fun to have around. They will eat peanut halves and also sunflower chips (no shells) if you put them out, but bluebirds love mealworms the most.
You definitely want to do something to repair the hole size. One-and-a-half inches is a standard bluebird hole opening (for Eastern bluebirds…go slightly larger for western and mountain bluebirds…1 and 9/16 inches). Here’s a good link for you on bluebird nestbox hole repairs.
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awesome blog. I can’t wait to follow along and learn something too. I have numerous bird feeders and houses in my backyard. I love to watch them. I have a question…I leave my door open to my screened in porch so the dogs can freely come in and out from the yard to the porch. I have a bird who has developed a nest in one of my ferns hanging inside. Normally, if birds get into my porch…I have to “coax” them out the way they came in. This momma bird is so smart…she sits on the door when we are on the porch waiting for us to leave so she visit the babies. And when we come out and surprise her she has taught herself how to easily fly back out the door…no issues. Should I leave the fern hanging where it is so she doesn’t get confused or annoyed. Or should I move the fern to the patio for easier access for her? I don’t want her to abandon the babies or get worried.