Western Bluebird

(The following article was written in the 1980’s by the late Tom Rodgers who taught at Chico State for 27 years and was one of the founders of the Altacal Audubon Society.  He intended articles such as this one to be supplements to field guides – Ed.)

Do our Blue­birds house-hunt in the fall, making plans for spring? Sometimes it seems so.  Long after nesting is over, they visit nest boxes that they may or may not have used before.  Then, they become rather scarce through the dead of winter.  When the first spring-­like days occur in February, they may be seen in small bands flying overhead. Their flight is as soft as their pew, pew, pew notes. If you don't recognize them by their soft flight and soft notes, you may recognize them when they perch on telephone wires with their heads and necks bent slightly forward giving them a round-shouldered look. By that time you will probably have seen their chestnut breasts if not their blue backs. When foraging near the ground, they often hover in the air like Say's Phoebes, or like a small, soft-flying Kestrel (if you can imagine that).

(photo courtesy of Seattle Audubon Society)

By March, they appear in pairs, and in April, may choose your Bluebird house for a brood or two, especially if you live in the lower foothills, below the dense Ponderosa Pines area. The male may then produce a slightly different series of notes, his only "song" a soft and low chu, chu, chu, or sometimes chu, chu-lee, chu. At that time, the pew, pew, pew notes are also heard quite often.

At our home in Paradise, one pair produced three young and then started a second brood in the same box. The male apparently abandoned, leaving all the care of the young to the female. After the "abandoned" mother succeed in launching three more young, we decided to clean out the nest box. We raised the lid, and lo-and-behold, we found she had incubated the eggs and raised the young in the concave back of the, then quite dry, dead male, a beautiful blue lining for the nest. He hadn't helped feed the young, but he must have at least helped incubate the eggs.