How to Attract Bluebirds (And Why Your Seed Feeder Will Not Work)

Bluebirds are the one bird people most want and most often fail to get, because almost everything that works for other garden birds does not work for them.

They will not come to your seed feeder

This is the thing to understand first. Bluebirds do not eat sunflower seed. They are insect eaters through spring and summer, switching to berries in autumn and winter.

You can run the best-stocked feeder in the county and never see one. It is not the seed \u2014 it is that seed is irrelevant to them.

Mealworms are the answer

Live mealworms are the single most effective thing. Nothing else comes close. Dried mealworms work too and are far easier to keep, though some birds take longer to accept them.

Offer them in a shallow dish with smooth sides so they cannot crawl out, ideally somewhere open where a bluebird can see it from a perch. Start with a small handful at a consistent time each day.

Once a pair learns the dish exists, they will check it daily \u2014 and during nesting they will empty it, because they are feeding young.

They want open ground

Bluebirds hunt by perching and dropping onto insects on short grass. Woodland does not suit them. Neither does a dense, heavily planted garden.

What they want is open lawn or meadow with scattered perches \u2014 a fence line, a low branch, a wire. If you have that, you have a chance. If your garden is closed in, you probably will not get them however much you offer.

The nest box is the real lever

More than food, a correctly built box is what brings bluebirds in. They are cavity nesters and natural cavities are scarce.

The entrance hole must be 1 1/2 inches. This is not a rough guide \u2014 it is the specification. Smaller excludes them; larger admits starlings, which will evict them and are the main reason bluebird boxes fail.

No perch below the entrance. Bluebirds grip the wood directly, and a perch only helps predators and starlings.

Mount it four to six feet up, on a smooth pole with a baffle rather than a tree. Face the entrance toward open ground, so fledglings have somewhere to go on their first flight.

Space boxes at least a hundred yards apart. Bluebirds are territorial and will not tolerate close neighbours \u2014 this is the most common mistake people make when they put up three boxes hoping to improve their odds.

Put it up in late winter

February in most of the country. They scout early, and a box that goes up in April has almost certainly missed the first brood.

They often raise two or three broods in a season, so a late box is not wasted \u2014 but early is better.

Water helps

A shallow bath, moving water if you can manage it. Bluebirds bathe frequently and a dripper or small fountain is genuinely one of the better ways to attract them.

Skip the insecticides

Obvious once stated. A garden treated for insects has nothing for an insect-eating bird. If you want bluebirds, you are accepting some bugs.

Be patient

Bluebirds can take a full season to find a new box. Put it up, keep it clean, offer mealworms consistently, and give it a year before concluding it has not worked.

When they do arrive, they tend to come back. A box that hosts one brood usually hosts many.