Welcoming bluebirds to your home

I don't know about you, but I would really like to see spring. The day I wrote this column the temps were in the 50s and 60s and the bluebirds were flitting about looking for lunch.

When I looked at the forecast for the day this column was to be published I thought winter will be back. Bah!

At least I was able to watch for a short time, one of my favorite birds, the bluebird. In my mind's eye the bluebird is the harbinger of spring. So even if the winter weather is here the day this column is published, I will keep thinking spring because I have seen a bluebird in the Heartland within the last two weeks.

If you want to attract bluebirds to your landscape, I suggest you do two things.

First, purchase a bluebird house and place it in an open area in your landscape. The house should have a 1-1/2-inch entrance hole. Most houses have the entrance hole about 6" to 12" above the floor of the house, although there are several other variations on the market. Some have a see-through window on the roof so you can watch the family as it grows.

Mealworms sit inside a bluebird feeder at Sunny Hill in Cape Girardeau. (Laura Simon)

As mentioned above, place the bluebird house in an open area in your landscape. You will find that bluebirds stay away from wooded areas. So place your house on a fence post about 6 feet to 8 feet in the air and so that the entrance hole faces away from wooded or heavily landscaped areas.

The second thing you need to do is to feed mealworms to your bluebirds. The best thing to do is purchase a bluebird feeder. This enclosed feeder has a window in the front, so that bluebirds can look in to see if there are mealworms available for munching. The feeder has an entrance hole on the side to allow the bluebird to get to the mealworms. Other birds may also like to munch on mealworms but they will not go into the feeder. So the meal worm supply is kept just for bluebirds.

I like to place the bluebird feeder on a 6-foot post about 10 feet away from the front of the bluebird house. This helps them find the feeder by making it visible from the bluebird house.

When starting to feed mealworms, just place a few at a time in the feeder. When you find that bluebirds are starting to frequent the feeder, you can increase the number of worms you supply in the feeder at a time. I have had several birders tell me that the bluebirds become so accustomed to your feeding them that if the feeder is empty they will sit on your kitchen windowsill until you come out and replenish the mealworm supply in the feeder.

Bluebirds are migrating birds. They may produce one to three families in a season. They tend to leave our area in the early fall, but they usually come back, at least to my house sometime in January or February, depending upon the weather.

So if you want to see a family of blue develop in your back yard, place a bluebird house and a bluebird feeder that you can see from your favorite easy chair and enjoy the show.