Bird Watching: Bluebird thread #12, 0 by 2dCousinDave

2dCousinDave wrote:
Hi Birdie:

With birds it's hard to say that anything is unusual. We think of them as pets but after all, they are wild birds and they behave in many different ways. Many of them seem to have different personalities, which is most obvious in their aggressiveness and how much risk they will take. You see this in the birds that will fly down to the feeder while you are still there while others wait until they feel safe. And, there are many things, bad and good that we don't see, that impact on their personalities, and especially their fears, such as the existence of nearby preditors and other sources of food, water and shelter that are available to them. I have been fortunate in having my birds here every day (and usually five or six times a day, summer and winter) since 2004. But I have friends whose BBs disappear for weeks at a time, then suddenly reappear. They all feel as you do now.

It has always seemed strange to me that when nesting parents chase away juveniles from a previous brood, the young birds don't try to sneak back, remembering that there were mealworms here. I see dozens of BBs in the neighborhood and suspect some of them were hatched in my nestbox. I even had a couple that nested in an abandoned woodpecker hole in a tree right behind our property. I go down there to photograph them and they are within 200 feet of the feeder, but they don't come to it -- ever. But, when we have severe winter weather, such as when we have18 inches or so of snow, we suddenly see as many as two dozen blues flocked together and they all come to the feeder. As soon as the weather improves, however, we only see our last brood (usually the adults and the juveniles from the last nesting of the season).

I had an invasion of starlings this morning so I moved the mealworms into the feeder to keep them from eating all the worms. The young BBs are not used to that so they enter with caution.

Dave