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A tip, just in case, maybe you are already thinking the same thing or maybe not, but even with your anti-sparrow measures, keep an eye on the nest box for house sparrow activity. Keep an eye out for other critters, too. Wasps come to my mind.
I think the bluebirds (if they are around) will investigate the new nest box even if they don’t use your feeder and may nest, too. I noticed that. Another observation has to do with the fact that I stop putting out dried food on hatch day and until the young fledge. I watch the bluebirds through binoculars and see the wide variety of wild food they bring to the young. They have no trouble feeding the young when there are sources of critters to feed them.
Maybe you know, don’t be disappointed if you don’t have nesting bluebirds this season. That was my experience and I gather it is common to not have a nest the first season you set up the box. But that isn’t a hard and fast rule and it isn’t too late.
Do you have a lot of house sparrows in you location? I have house sparrows around, but they haven’t been a problem. One thing I figured out the first season when I put up my nest box is to stop putting out food that attracts house sparrows. Just a tip FWIW.
If it were me, I would keep putting out food. Maybe you don’t want to keep putting out the live food for the time being when you don’t have bluebirds coming to your feeder, but you could put out peanut butter suet. Or keep putting out the live food if that is something you can do. Perhaps bluebirds will see it and learn that is a source of food and keep coming back.
As far as pictures, you’ll need to upload the images to a hosting site first. Then you use the IMG tool when you are composing your post, and provide the URL to the image location at the hosting site. There is a recent thread here where @tamsea and a few others discuss this, and @tamsea mentions a good hosting site.
I don’t know if my view is contrary or not. Maybe it is. The TL;DR version is the first question is whether or not you have bluebirds in the area. Second question is, if you know you have bluebirds in your area, then is there something, the environment around the feeder, or the feeder itself, discouraging the bluebirds from using your feeder and taking the food.
Opinion details:
My view is you have to have bluebirds present to begin with. If they are around and you put out a food that they will eat, then they will come to your feeder. If they are not around, they won’t come to your feeder no matter what you put out or how you present it. Or, if you were just beginning and there are bluebirds around, it may take a few days for the bluebirds to discover your feeder. And then there are the feeders. Are there bluebirds around, even coming around your feeder, but they won’t take food from the feeder, not even food they like? What about the environment around the feeder? Is the feeder in the open where the bluebirds will feel secure? What about predatory birds and other predators, such as cats?
My experience: Concerning the feeders that the bluebirds must enter, I gave several different types a try and none worked. I did see bluebirds investigating with one of them, but they would not enter. I didn’t try the BBB1, however. Maybe if I had used live food then that might have coaxed the bluebirds to enter. At any rate, I didn’t have luck feeding the bluebirds until I used an open feeder and figured out what they would eat. Now I feed a hand-mixed combination of suet nuggets, dried mealworms, and dried black soldier fly larvae. I’ve also been including dried darkling beetles and also a leftover bag of commercial berries-and-bugs seed mix, but I’m going to stop when I’ve used up what I have of these. For what it is worth, the bluebirds definitely like the suet nuggets. When I watch through binoculars and see them eating, that is what they are taking most of the time.
Of course an open feeder is there for all comers. The bluebirds do hold their own among the mockingbirds and starlings with the foods I’m putting out, but I can see that if I was putting live foods in the feeder that a gang of starlings would materialize in an instant and clean it out in seconds.
Last thought. Are you familiar with the Merlin app by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology? If not, it has a feature to identify birds by Sound. I’ve turned it on and let it run for five minutes and more. What I’m thinking is you could use that to learn if there are bluebirds nearby even if you can’t see them. You might be amazed at all the birds you (and the app) hear but you don’t see. Try it at different times of day. Around sunrise may be the best time, but take note of the times of day when you hear birds at your location and give it a try then. Anyway, the idea is this is a way to determine if you have bluebirds nearby. If the app identifies bluebirds then you know there are bluebirds within earshot. If it doesn’t, then there may be bluebirds in the area, just out of range of your ears. I will say, the app in combination with my iPhone seems pretty good at picking up and identifying faint birdsongs.
Good luck. Please share if you figure it out.
Cleaned out the nest box just now. There was one unhatched egg present. There were two after hatch day. Don’t know when the second egg disappeared or how.
Some other observations. Now that the bluebird babies have fledged I put out (dry) food into the feeders. The mockingbirds are noticeably more protective than in past days. I wonder if the are resource guarding (the bird food in the feeders) more than territory guarding or nest guarding.
A baby thrasher crossed the yard on the ground while I was working. I say it was a thrasher only because there was an adult brown thrasher watching over it. I wouldn’t have recognized the chick otherwise.
The adult bluebirds came to the feeder while I was working. I’m surprised still at how close they let me get to them, or how close they come to me.
The young are fledging. I started watching the box from the porch shortly after sunrise. For a while nothing was happening, and then the adults started visiting the box and peering in. Sometime they would go in, and sometimes they carried away waste. The young would peer out off and on. At around 09:00 local an adult arrived at the box and peered in, and then perched on the peak of the box roof. One of the you peered out, then stuck its head out, and then flow out of the box, followed by the adult.
I waited a little while after to see another fledge, but I had been sitting long enough. I know the rest will fledge when they are ready.
Thinking about yesterday, seeing the juvenile feeding this brood, it occurred to me I was probably wrong when I thought earlier that these nesting pairs are different birds. I thought this because the new nests were started so soon after the earlier brood fledged. Maybe the second pair was different from the first, and this pair is the same as the first? Or maybe it has been the same pair all along? Anyway, I doubt it has been three separate pairs.
I wonder if there will be a fourth nest this season. I suppose there is enough time.
I thought the bluebird young were about to fledge, and maybe they still will, but it is late in the day and I see they are still being fed.
The interesting new observation is I saw what I believe are young bluebirds hanging around with the adults and one of juvenile birds carried food to the nest box and fed one of the young at the box opening. These do not have adult plumage, but the ends of their wings are blue, and they are scraggly looking.
I did some searching and learned a new term: conspecific helping. So, this is indeed a thing. and these are apparently older fledglings that have remained in the parents’ territory.
I also learned that juveniles molt in late summer or early autumn and lose their spotted feathers for adult coloration. So, it fits that these older young would not look like adults this early.
I tried to keep watching but the afternoon heat and mosquitoes got to me. I planning on watching again early tomorrow morning to see what I can see, and hopefully video.
I left out the key sentence in the article I refer to above: That is that the bluebirds handle or tolerate hot days better than we do.
All in all, I think the bluebirds know what they are doing. Aside from a suitable box with effective prdator protections, the next best thing we can do as I see it is provide water.
The latest issue of the Florida Bluebird Society newsletter has an article on this topic. Some notes from the article:
* Strapping ice packs to the outside of the box is a bad idea that could make it harder for the female to incubate the eggs – female must keep eggs at 100 F or higher
* A normal bluebird body temperature is 104 F and they tolerate higher ambient temperatures than we do – too high temperature for them is 107 F
* If concerned about temperature, measure the temperature inside the box
* Nest box material, thickness, color, and ventilation are important – with respect to temperature, wood is better – thicker walls provide better insulation – light colors reflect more solar energy – poor airflow traps more heat
* Provide fresh, clean water nearby
Sialis says 4-5% of bluebirds lay white eggs.
The paired box situation is interesting. Are there no hard and fast rules with bluebirds?
No news on the bluebirds. All is well.
The weather has been lousy so I have’t spent any time outside sitting and watching, so I don’t know what is going on with the mockingbirds. From the kitchen window I haven’t seen the mockingbirds harrassing loiterers. Usually I wouldn’t have to look for long before seeing one of the mocking birds streaking across the yard. Maybe their nesting has entered a new phase. The crepe myrtle is covered in Spanish moss such that I can’t see the female sitting on the nest or even the nest, so just don’t know. Reminder to self: Look up mockingbird nesting timeline.
Today was last day I open the nest box this cycle. Now looking forward to another possibly futile attempt to video at least one of the young fledging.
The TL;DR version is that while it may not look like it, the nesting bluebirds benefit from the presence of the aggressive nesting mockingbirds. Moreover, it may be the bluebirds have evolved to take advantage of the nesting mockingbirds and instinctively know how to manage their nest and young without triggering the mockingbirds. Just an idea.
I’m curious about something. I mentioned how the nesting pair of mockingbirds are inadvertently aiding the nesting bluebirds by monopolizing the defense of the backyard territory. The bluebirds, in turn, apparently know how to go to and from the box without triggering the territorial response from the mockingbirds.
With a sense that this may be well known, I first searched for some words that apply to this observation. Commensalism seems to apply, that is where one species benefits while the other is neither helped nor harmed. In this case, the bluebirds are the species that benefit from the territorial protection provided by the mockingbirds. The mockingbirds are practically bodyguards to the bluebirds, but only provided the bluebirds don’t provoke them.
Facilitation is another term I came across, which is when a species creates conditions that help other species. Also, perhaps, indirect mutualism or incidental mutualism, even though neither species is consciously cooperating.
I didn’t find anything discussing the specific scenario happening in my backyard. Of course the aggression of nesting mockingbirds is well known. And, interestingly, I read that mockingbirds will summon help from other mockingbirds in nearby territory to help with a persistent predator, and even that other birds will gather to watch. But I didn’t find a discussion of another nesting bird species benefiting from the presence of nesting mackingbirds. Maybe there are articles on this, but I didn’t find any.
I think to myself, Complex Systems.
No news. All is well.
Tuesday next week is the date I stop checking the box because of the age of the young and to not to scare them into fledging early.
We are near the location where the city launches fireworks over the bay. It gets pretty loud. By my count of the days, the young should still be in the box and about to fledge. If they fledge over the 4th, I guess I won’t know if they fledged because it is their time or because of the fireworks.
No news today, except it is evident the nesting bluebirds have adapted to the presence of the aggressive nesting mockingbirds. I watched the male bluebird come in low from the northwest corner of the backyard and beeline it to the nest box. That approach placed the crepe myrtle and the mockingbird nest on the other side of the nest box and probably the shortest distance to the box once crossing the fence line. I’ve also noticed that when the male perches on the nest box, he does so on the sloping roof side away from the crepe myrtle instead of directly on top of the box. He is not as skilled as the female when entering the box, however. He still lands on the outside of the opening and then goes in. But he is still quick enough that he doesn’t draw the attention of the mockingbirds. This is all very interesting.
The mockingbirds are as aggressive as ever. They are not letting up in the least. A poor mourning dove landed in the crepe myrtle, apparently unaware of the mockingbird nest. Within a second a mockingbird came across the yard and chased the poor dove out of the tree.
One other interesting event. I was watering the plants and standing a few feet from the nest box but positioned where I could see the box out of the corner of my eye. I managed to catch the female leave the box while I was standing there. Very cool.
