During the colonization of North America, as forest was cleared for pasture and farmland, bluebirds thrived, likely becoming one of our most common songbirds. The bluebird’s lifestyle does overlap with our human one, but not simply because we’re quick to anthropomorphize him. A rakish Humphrey Bogart, in bright Technicolor. Then up he goes, returning to his own rooftop with a caterpillar squirming in his beak like a drooping cigarette. When the summer yard is at its greenest, time and again the bluebird drops down, hovering a moment above the grasstops, as though stooping for a bit of string stuck in the carpet. This charismatic bird has long been valued by farmers as a tenant with a healthy compulsion for vacuuming up pests. In fact, since the bird’s summer diet consists largely of insects gleaned from the ground, the nestbox may simply be the best vantage-point from which to hunt. This dedication, as well as its approachability, have long endeared the bluebird to his human admirers.
And perhaps its habit of perching atop the box reminds us of a loyal sentry posted on his turret. Both father and mother are devoted parents, sometimes making more than a dozen trips each hour back and forth to the nest to feed their young.
For one thing, the cavities it chooses are often just 4 to 6 feet off the ground-right at our eye-level. While for most birds, a nest is rarely more than a place to lay their eggs, the bluebird’s domesticity seems more than a little human.
Ready to house-hunt with the bluebird? Sporting an orange bib and “carrying the sky on his back” (Thoreau again), the bluebird appears beside a nestbox or a woodpecker hole, inspecting inside, outside, above and below, or taking a perch nearby and singing a little song, as though testing the acoustics.
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