Bluebirds For Your Garden
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- March
- 22
There’s nothing like having a pair of nesting Eastern bluebirds in your yard.
They’re also great for your garden. Like wrens, bluebirds eat tons of bugs every day — especially when nesting and feeding their babies.
Our ace photographer Frank Becerra took these two shots in his Brewster backyard. Amazing, aren’t they? Bluebirds are notoriously shy, so Frank set up his camera where he thought he’d get a good shot, then went back inside to wait for the birds to return to their nest in the wooden box. Using a remote shutter release, he captured the birds up close and in full action.
Bluebirds, the state bird of New York, like to nest in the cavities of dead trees and have adapted well to these specially made wooden boxes. (You can find them at good home and garden centers.)
I have a good friend who made me two bluebird boxes a couple of Christmases ago. Here’s one of them:
The first year, I just got sparrows. But last February, I saw four bluebirds checking out the boxes, sort of trying them out for size.
Sure enough, a pair came back in mid-spring and made a nest and raised their young. What a treat it was to pull into the driveway in May and see them every day.
This time of year, you want to empty out the nests so the birds can start fresh and make a new nest. And you don’t want them to build on top of an old nest because then the babies would be high enough to fall right out of the open hole. When I dumped out the boxes last March, I found three perfectly crafted nests stacked right on top of each other.
Here’s what I found this year when I emptied the boxes:
I can’t wait for spring for lots of reasons, but seeing nesting bluebirds again sure is high on my list. I saw a pair out at the head of the driveway last weekend, so here’s hoping.
I’m also looking forward to working with Sandy Morrissey of Hartsdale on a story for the paper later this spring about her work to bring bluebirds back to central and lower Westchester. (Sandy also organizes the Girl Scouts garden tour each spring,)
By the time I heard last fall about how she’s been installing bluebird boxes around area cemeteries and golf courses, the nesting birds were all gone and we had nothing to photograph.
For more on bluebirds, here are links to a few Web sites to get you started:
This entry was posted
on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 12:49 pm by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
Bill:
My Father in Law made a Bluebird house for me and my wife Pam while he was sick with liver cancer. We have it on our side yard in Eastchester, hoping to lure some Bluebirds,
but so far no takers.
Ed Bonci
Hi Ed, good luck with the bluebirds.
btw, have you pulled your dahlias out of storage yet? I had a question from a reader who liked the how-to-care-for-dahlias story I did with you last fall.
She wanted to know how early she could begin her dahlias in indoor pots before putting them outside. I said April should be fine. Any advice for her?
Hi Bill:
I wrote a dahlia propagation article of the Westchester Horticultural News. Have you seen it? It’s in the current issue…Mar/Apr. If not, let me know and I’ll send you a copy.
For your potted dahlia reader I would suggest potting up her dahlias no earlier than the 2nd week of April. That will give her 2 weeks for the plant to sprout and 3-4 weeks for the plant to get to about 6-8 inches.
Ed