Bluebirds are attractive little creatures with soft appealing colors and devoted domestic habits that make them prized additions to any country home. Well, maybe.

Let me tell you about some experiences that taxed my charity somewhat with regard to bluebirds. When we lived in Northern Michigan, our neighbors put up two bluebird houses within easy view of our kitchen window. We watched with interest the contest between the bluebirds and the tree swallows until it was finally resolved by the bluebirds having one house and the tree swallows having the other.

About this time we discovered that one of the bluebirds’ favorite roosting places was the top of our mailbox. That was okay, except that the box began to slowly turn white. Now of course the white material came from those gentle colored and graceful little bluebirds, but it was still bird dirt!

Many of our neighbors used artificial owls to keep seagulls off of their boats, so we decided that maybe an owl on the mailbox might encourage the bluebirds to choose somewhere else for their favorite privy. We stopped by the garden store one day to see what was available in owls, and looked at several life sized great horned models.

Then I spotted a neat little ceramic owl that was not only a replica of owl shape but was a very attractive piece of artwork. We bought it and I constructed an elaborate frame to hold the ceramic creature onto the top of the mailbox. Finally it was mounted and we watched with interest to see the bluebirds’ reaction to the fierce little owl. Well, they stopped alighting on the mailbox. Instead they landed on the owl’s head. At least it was not as large an area as the mailbox top so the weekly cleanup involved a smaller space.

We eventually sold that house and moved to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Here we set up a bluebird house about sixty yards from the house and in easy proximity to a hawthorn tree, to which the young could launch their first solo flights. We watched the usual contest between the tree swallows and the bluebirds, but this time the bluebirds refused to be displaced. One brood was successfully launched and then the trouble began. For some reason the new bluebirds developed the habit of flying to the house, clinging to the screens on the front windows, and, you guessed it, depositing white streaks down the screens. After about the third removal of the screens for washing, my wife declared that she had had quite enough. The birdhouse had to go! I tried to plan a way to make the move with the minimum of disturbance, hoping that the birds would not abandon the new clutch of eggs in the nest. I dug a new hole for the post about 150 yards from the house and opposite a grove of towering oaks that would provide plenty of perches for the bluebird family. Then I waited until evening when the mother was in the nest, and very quietly slipped up behind the box. In my hand was an old sock full of cotton balls. This I quickly stuffed in the entrance hole to keep the mother in the box until we got to the new location. I then lifted the pole out of its hole and trekked across the yard to the new site. By the time I got there I had an aching back and the mother bird had torn through the sock and was pecking at my fingers. We set the pole in the ground and carefully packed the earth around it. Only then did we get behind the pole and I removed the sock and my hand from the box. The mother bird took off like a shot and flew to the top of the tallest oak. We went back to the house, hoping that she would realize that the trauma was over, but she never went back to the box. Later that summer, another pair of birds investigated the box and may have used it. When I cleaned it this fall there were no eggs left.

But that is not the end of our bluebird story. This fall we planted a small home orchard. In hopes of keeping the deer from destroying the trees, we installed an electronic high frequency sound generator in the orchard. It is too far from the house to conveniently run an electric line to the orchard, so I intalled a solar cell and a battery to power the sound generator. So far the trees have been safe but the battery has run down twice. You see, the bluebirds like to perch on the solar cell and the white streaks they make down the cell do not allow the sunlight in to generate electricity. I wash it about once a week, but I’m thinking of other alternatives. My present idea is to put a brass rod across the top of the solar cell and encase it with short sections of tubing that will roll when the birds alight on it. If they fall on their chins a few times, maybe they will use the trees for landing places rather than the solar cell. We shall see.

Dec. 28, 1994