Attracting bluebirds

Listen to this radio show (MP3 download) or read below.

Radio interview source: Dan Sparks, active member, National Bluebird Society

Luring bluebirds to your yard starts with putting up a shelter for them. They're cavity nesters and need some kind of box to raise their families in. We built several bluebird houses around our property when we moved there. We put up a couple by the pond, and a few on fence posts.

Dan Sparks is a member of the National Bluebird Society, and says the key to housing bluebirds is putting the box in the open, away from brushy, wooded areas. Make sure you have easy access to it, too.

"Monitor the boxes at least once a week," Sparks says. "You just check and see what's going on -- if the bluebird is building a nest and how far along it is. And you take notes. You make a notation of when the first egg was laid, then when you go back, you can pretty much guess what you're going to see or what you should see."

You want to check the progress of the birds as they raise their young, and make sure nothing else is getting in there. Sparrows are an arch-enemy of the bluebird and viciously take over their nesting boxes. Sparks says if you can't control the sparrows, you'll have to take the bluebird boxes down. We have plenty of sparrows and I'm sure they got in ours and hatched babies. I never had the heart to destroy their nests.