Where the Bluebirds Live

Here's a short story.

While living in my former home I started feeding wild birds. I learned of the loss of nesting places for the Eastern Bluebird. I bought a bluebird house and put it up in the best spot in my yard. No bluebirds came to stay.

When we moved to this home the former homeowner left a decorative birdhouse on a pole next to the woods, right where the yard ended. This is one of those houses that no real bird should ever live in, they are not supposed to be right or best for real birds.

Well when we moved in we found the Eastern Bluebird living there.

I did put up the official "proper" bluebird house. No bluebirds wanted it.

For years that decorative house was home to bluebirds. I loved it! The old tree trunk/pole rotted. We put the decorative house up on another dead tree trunk. Then that rotted, then the house itself rotted.

The bluebirds still came, I didn't know where they were living but saw them going to a certain area of the woods. The former winter my husband expressed that he wanted to 'clean the woods' with a chainsaw. I was dumbfounded. He pointed to a dead tree trunk and said that something like that should come down. It was a small tree and it would hurt no one if it fell wherever it wanted. And guess what? That is where the bluebirds chose to live When I visited the tree later in the season I figured it out. You see the last time I'd seen it, there were no holes in it but now there were multiple holes created by birds.

The next season I saw the bluebirds flying directly for this tree. They used it for two seasons then over the winter it fell over.

There are two lessons here. One is that you can do all that the experts say that the wild creatures need or want and they can reject it as their habitat, and two, leave the dead trees in the woods alone for whatever use the wild creatures have in mind for them.

There is no need to "clean the woods" in my opinion!

(I have tried to photograph the bluebirds many times and have failed. They spook when I open the door or window and shooting through glass and the screens has not worked well at all.)