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Hello everyone! Paula from central Ohio here. I have been involved with native cavity nesting bird conservation since 2002. I monitor a number of trails in central and northern (South Bass Island) Ohio. I also help train new monitors, both with monitoring tasks and data entry on Cornell’s NestWatch database. Birds I have housed over the years include Eastern Bluebirds, Purple Martins (six colonies now), Tree Swallows, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadees, Carolina Wrens, and the occasional House Wren.
Hi everybody! As usual, I am (un)fashionably late to the party. Things have been CRAZY here the last few weeks.
I have been birding since I was a child when my dad built and mounted boxes in our backyard. That’s more years ago than I care to think about! There is no time in my life for a trail, but I have hosted EABL, CACH, TUTI, BHNU and sadly a few HOWR have made attempts to nest in my boxes. No HOSP problems here but they are only a couple of miles away.
As a mod, I welcome all of you to this new place. Come on, spring!
Gin
Atlanta, GAWelcome, MadameWingNut! and nice to see you Gin!
Central NY
TMB Studiosblue birds on my feeder today video
My Name is Marcel from Salem NH, I’m so excited to be here, I’ve been watching my girls & (boys) for about 8 years and have been seeing the Eastern Blue Birds from December to April enjoying my Dried n live mealies and I make BB suet in my green house. I usually have about 10-13, and no luck in my 4 houses until last spring. It was beautiful one pair stayed in a new none traditional Acorn bb house(my spouse wanted for birthday), I installed a color motion detector camera and got to see everything I had time to see. It was the coolest thing in the world I had(they had) lol, 2 successful broads of 5 each. Then laid another 4 and I was waiting for #5egg, and looked at my camera feed at lunch at work and was in shock freaking out seeing a bird in the nest a (HOSP)taking the third of 4 eggs out. I flew home (2 miles) but was not in time. To find 2 gone and 2 on ground broken. And mom gone and dad back in the am swooping after hops. And left that afternoon. I took down the house its in the greenhouse till march 1st. Like last year. And will begin trying management of hops. So that being said this is my favorite time of years as I feed usually 13 bb, only 6-9 this year so far, I think because its so warm and no snow (little 2 inch )last week. All the winter berry and holly is still fully on the bushes, (so I think they just have lots of food and don’t need me yet.) my video is live for me and if this site posting allows that link. Its on the feeder hanging 13 feet above ground and the one I put below is from 946am this morning. They are here all day on and off every hour. I’ll set the recorder to 2 minutes if you guys want as I save the batteries keeping it at 34seconds. If that does not work ill take still it has a camera button for shots. I’m so happy to be here, sorry it was so long. And I apologize ahead of time for my grammatical errors, I’m not a good writer. I hope you enjoy my current bb’s. And I have lots of picks from last years broads n videos as I was a bit obsessed, I think some of you probably understand. Thank you for allowing me in on this beauty. Cheers MarcelinNH (Male)😊
https://arlo.netgear.com/hmsweb/users/library/share/link/EB44CCB4357DA2ADWelcome, Marcel. Nice video Marcel! I have never had 13 bluebirds at once!! The most I’ve had is maybe 6, the siblings and parents from the last nesting. You can try a sparrow spooker on your house. It helps most of the time with discouraging house sparrows. Is your acorn nestbox easy to monitor? (an access door to look in on things?)We just switched forums here so it will take awhile for everyone to find this and even then our numbers are a little low here recently. But usually there’s plenty of activity during nesting season. Something else you might want to have on hand is a Van Ert trap. It’s a trap you put inside a nestbox. When you have a HOSP claiming a box you can trap it with this trap. I’m not sure if it would work with your Acorn box. Is the Acorn Box a decorative box? I’m a little worried about it.
Tammy
Holy cow we have moved!!
Has everyone come with?? Bella Lisa told me about the move on my Flicker page.I wasn’t on the forum much last year since I didn’t have any Blues…
Hopefully this year I will have some and be more active!Here in WI we are riding out another short cold snap. Temps have been below zero with windchills in the -30’s! Brrrr!
Donna in WI
Hi, Donna. A few of us have moved over here. It might have been wise to wait and move after everyone came back for the season instead of doing it at the beginning…but time will tell. I’m glad you are here again. Not having blues is NO excuse. Stay on and tell us about all your wonderful birds. I’ll try to not let my envy show too much.
Tammy
I honestly think anyone would have to be blind not to find where we’ve moved to. Better to move before the season got really underway than change horses mid-stream. The old forum has the new link plastered all over it in big red bold text – and that will only affect those who had the yuku link bookmarked (bluebirdnutcafe.yuku.com) instead of bluebirdnutcafe.com, because the actual domain name comes right here now.
Central NY
TMB StudiosPerry Ramsey here. I used to go by the name pgrfw because I lived in Fort Wayne, IN. I was host to about ten fledglings a year back there, but I gave it all up and moved to Los Angeles. Even though I live in the LA city limits I have a pretty nice setup here. We see scrub jays, mockingbirds, flickers, phoebes, a great horned owl visits almost every night, and we occasionally see a bobcat. (And crows. And ravens. Tons of them.) I see bluebirds around, just not in my yard. I didn’t get my nest boxes up last year. Have to get on the stick and get some up before the season starts.
Hey, Perry!! Nice hearing from you! You gave me your trap, right? I’m terrible with names! So glad you are seeing so many need birds at your new place. We would love to here about your Western Bluebirds (and any other bird) if you get them. I love visiting other parts of the country and seeing their birds. There are some different hummingbirds out there too.
Tammy
Hello BB lovers! I’m Amy from Indianapolis, hence AmyfromIndy and am so excited I found this forum. I had never actually seen a Bluebird other than in photos and was determined to bring them to my backyard as I am an avid bird watcher. I now have a backyard full of them and am so proud my efforts and research paid off! I am a photographer and have set my feeders up right outside my windows which has allowed me amazing photo opps. Along with the Bluebirds have come flocks of Starlings. Though beautiful, they seem to bully my Bluebirds. I have been the Starling Police waving them away when I can. I want to put up a few Bluebird houses in my back yard now that I have so many in my trees and have researched how best to do that so I indeed get the tenants I’m looking for. Any advice would be welcome! Happy to be here to share in the appreciation of these beautiful birds!
Amy! We’re so glad you found us!As for nestbox placement, follow the rough guidelines in the information page here at Bluebirdnut.com. If you need additional, more specific info, feel free to start a thread and ask away!
Central NY
TMB StudiosWelcome, Amy. Looking forward to seeing some of your photos.
Ask away. The forum is slow now but usually starts getting busy soon.Tammy
Welcome, Amy!
As you have found out, starlings can be a problem. They compete with native species for food and housing and most of the time will hog everything. What kinds of feed are you offering? Maybe that is what is attracting them. When nesting season begins they might try competing for any boxes you have, whether they can enter them or not. I don’t know how you feel about trapping them but it can be done. In any case, those starlings have to go!
Gin
Atlanta, GAWelcome, Amy! Although the starlings are a pretty bird, they are non-native (brought in from Europe in the 1800’s) and a real threat to our native birds like Gin said. They come in groups of hundreds to our rural areas and look like black water in our fields. They are very nasty after their “visit” but mainly will try to take over our beloved birds and others housing. We don’t want to make them feel welcome here. Look forward to some good photos from you!
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