4 Helpful Tips
Attracting bluebirds is a bit challenging, especially when you’re willing to invite them to your yard. You just need to apply some useful tips and tricks. Consequently, these little creatures start coming to your yard and do the natural pest control by eating insects.
How Can You Attract Bluebirds to Your Yard?
1. Serve Mealworms
A researcher found that bluebirds’ diet included around 68% of insects (Beal 1915). Mealworms are insects. You may consider them as worms, but they are basically the darkling beetles’ larvae. The good news is bluebirds are irresistible to eat mealworms.
If you want to attract bluebirds to your backyard, you can serve live mealworms in a shallow dish or tray consistently in the area you have fixed for bluebirds. You can also provide bluebirds with a birdfeeder full of live mealworms.
Now the question is, where do you find live mealworms? You can raise mealworms by yourself, purchase from local pet stores, or order online. If you choose the last option, we recommend you choose the 500 Live Mealworms from Amazon.
However, live mealworms are pretty expensive. Even you have to take care of the live mealworms to keep them alive for bluebirds. If you don’t want to bear the cost of live mealworms, offer bluebirds with dried ones.
In this case, we can suggest you purchase the Dried Mealworms (The link takes you to Amazon). Here’s the kicker! Sometimes, bluebirds don’t want to eat dried mealworms, as they love eating live ones.
To feed bluebirds dried mealworms, you have to follow these strategies.
Start feeding bluebirds with live mealworms.
Once they consistently eat them, add some dried ones with the live ones.
Hopefully, bluebirds will accidentally eat dried mealworms and recognize them as excellent treats.
This way, bluebirds will be accustomed to eating dried ones only.
2. Hang High-Quality Bluebird Feeders
You have already known about attracting bluebirds with mealworms. To feed bluebirds these delicious treats, you need to hang good quality bluebird feeders in your backyard. The feeders should have a large roof, small entrances, and enough capacity for live mealworms.
3. Avoid Applying Pesticides or Insecticides to Your Yard
In spring, summer, and early fall, a bluebird’s diet mainly depends on various insects. If you want to attract them to your yard, you should keep your yard chemical-free. Applying pesticides or insecticides can eliminate a healthy food source of bluebirds.
If you don’t put pesticides or insecticides in your yard, bluebirds can get an excellent food source that can include moths, termites, mosquitoes, crickets, and spiders. These birds can play a vital role in organically providing pest control.
4. Install Specifically Designed Nest boxes
If you want to attract bluebirds to your yard, you should install specifically designed nest boxes for them. However, bluebirds are cavity nesters. They usually nest inside woodpecker holes, oak trees, or dead pine, as they cannot excavate their own holes.
Now, the thing is that most people don’t have dead trees in their yard. Installing nest boxes can be a great alternative for them. Whether you build your nest boxes or purchase several ones from a local store or online, make sure that they should include the following characteristics.
Nestboxes should be made of rot-resistant wood, like cedar.
They should be easy to open and clean after the nesting season.
The outside of the nest boxes should be painted, but the inside should be designed with untreated wood.
The roof of the nest boxes should be waterproof, but the bottom should have holes to drain water and dirt
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