Hi Tammy, I know there is a beloved homemade suet recipe, but I’ve been buying suet cakes and crumbling them with great success. In addition to the bluebirds, there are a lot of other species that seem to like it crumbled up for them (eg: woodpeckers, flickers, jays, titmice, carolina wren, chickadees, nuthatches, etc). As for the mealworms, I’ve really been thinking about this one. The bluebirds that feed at our feeders nested at the neighbors house last year (we didn’t have any nesting boxes) and successfully fledged 2 broods which addressed my concern about calcium depletion from the dried mealworms I feed them over the winter. I also find that on nice days like today, they don’t eat much here at all so are finding food elsewhere even as winter is waning. I’m really glad to have chimed in on this board; this has been an enlightening and thought-provoking thread. I hope you also have great luck with the dried mealworms if you decide to go that route, Tammy. And I also hope you might be onto something about dried vs live with regard to the calcium issue.
Carolyn
New Hampshire