The Animal Blog

Since moving into my house about a year ago I've noticed that despite backing into the woods, my house is somewhat devoid of wildlife. A couple of days ago a spotted a male bluebird flying through my backyard.

In an attempt to lure the bluebirds to take residence at my house, I've setup a bluebird box.

The setup is pretty simple. The bluebird box was purchased from Lowes for $12.99. For the pole, I used 10 foot section of 3/4" black iron pipe. I cut off 2 feet of the pipe leaving 8 feet. To mount the box to the pole, I drilled two holes into the top of the pole and screwed the box into these holes. For stability, I buried two feet of the pole into the dirt, leaving the box sitting about 6 feet off the ground.

They say that you should point the entrance to the box away from prevailing winds, but winds seem to circle in all directions in my backyard; so I pointed the box toward my house so I can watch from any window.

To make the area even more enticing, I purchased the lovely birdbath shown above. This was from home depot. The base and bowl are sold as separate pieces, I think it ran about $22 for both. Don't ask me how I'm going to clean it; each piece ways about 50 pounds.

It's been almost three weeks since I put up my bluebird box. It's a little early, but still no activity.

To make the area a little more bird friendly, I put up a bird feeder. Because I'm new to the backyard birding world, I decided to take the cheap route first. The feeder you see below was around $4 from Home Depot. The pole was another $10.

After just a few house, I've gotten a pretty good variety of birds. It was a very wet and rainy day today, so none of my picture turned out well. If the weather changes tomorrow, I'll post pictures of what I've been getting.

Lots of activity at the bird feeder over the past couple days. Here a picture of some of the highlights:

Chipping Sparrows

Tufted Titmouse

Unknown Wren

Carolina Chickadee

After almost three weeks , I finally have some activity. At the end of the day there was still nothing in the box, but this bluebird is definitely checking it out.

No sign of the female today.

Entering the box 1

Entering the box 2

Perched on top

Puffed up and checking out the area

After a few days of back and forth (and the female making an appearance), the bluebirds have decided to take the box and they've started to build.

Working together

Female gathering pine straw

Entering the house

Male and female posing

Another puffed male shot