WHEN IS A BLUEBIRD NOT A BLUEBIRD?

My author, Lois Winston, stops by today, and for once she's not talking about dead bodies or getting me in trouble.

When is a Bluebird Not a Bluebird?

By Lois Winston

 

Recently, a neighbor made a bluebird house for us. Neither my husband nor I had ever seen a bluebird in the wild in all the years we lived in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. So we were really excited when a few days after hanging the house on our fence, a pair of bluebirds decided to move in. Over the course of the next few weeks, we watched as they flew back and forth with materials for building a nest and as they took turns leaving the house to fly off for insect meals.

Mama laid her eggs, and eventually, they hatched—coincidentally, on the same day A Crafty Collage of Crime, my twelfth Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, launched. We couldn’t tell how many, but we heard the chirping and saw the parents flying back and forth with sustenance for the little ones. We watched expectantly, hoping to get a glimpse of the babies. And then we did. They’d poke their heads out of the hole, waiting for mama and papa to return with food for them.

 

We were always very careful not to get too close to the birdhouse. We didn’t want to spook the residents. Most of the time, with the aid of a pair of binoculars, we watched from our living room window.

 

My husband became obsessed with learning more about bluebirds. One day he said, “I don’t think those are bluebirds. I don’t see any pink on their bellies.”

 

I figured there was probably more than one variety of bluebird, so I scoured the internet, looking at picture after picture of bluebirds. None of them looked anything like the birds living in our bluebird house. Although small and blue, our birds were definitely not bluebirds.

 

My husband took a photo of one of the birds and uploaded it to a bird identification app. That’s when we confirmed our bluebirds weren’t bluebirds; they were tree swallows. Neither of us had ever heard of tree swallows. Then again, besides the pigeons in Manhattan, the only birds we regularly saw before moving to Tennessee were wrens, sparrows, cardinals, blue jays, and the occasional woodpecker. 

 

After some more searching around Google, I discovered that tree swallows often nest in bluebird houses. Not only is the real estate market fierce in the Nashville area, but apparently, it extends to birdhouses as well. The tree swallows swooped in and laid claim to the bluebird house before any bluebirds had a chance to put in a bid.

 

Tree swallows are beautiful birds, though, and we’re enjoying watching them and looking forward to the day the babies spread their wings and fly off for the first time. 

 

But we’re still hoping we’ll see a bluebird or two someday, possibly as the next residents of our bluebird house.