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Bluebirds Love MealwormsThe bird of happiness in the garden Bluebirds love mealworms. Just crazy about them. I was wondering, one spring, whether the bluebirds would adopt our new birdhouse. They had landed once or twice and peered into the box, but they weren't building. I had heard that mealworms might help persuade bluebirds to stay. I placed an order. Two days later, 1000 mealworms arrived in my mailbox in a small, screen-sided cardboard box. The mealworms were in a mesh bag with some newspaper and a piece of potato to provide moisture. Within an hour The weather was drizzly, and I hadn't seen a bluebird all day. I picked up a few of the inch-long mealworms and took them out to the birdhouse. They were dry and smooth, but they did wiggle. I whistled a poor imitation of a bluebird's song, put the mealworms on the birdhouse roof, and went back indoors. An hour later I noticed a female bluebird standing on the birdhouse roof. She cocked her head to study the pale yellow mealworms, and then she picked one up in her bill and swallowed it. After she'd eaten several, her mate flew in and ate some too. The nest time I opened my door and did my fake bluebird whistle, the female came down from a treetop to a branch near the birdhouse. She waited while I deposited the mealworms. And before I got back to my house she was eating them. After she demonstrated that it was safe, the male came and ate mealworms too. Bluebirds move in On day three of the mealworm program, the female started carrying soft dry grass into the birdhouse. The mealworms clinched the real estate deal. Soon I saw four pretty, sky-blue eggs inside. When the eggs hatched, I started putting out more mealworms. If I put them on the table next to where I was sitting, the bluebirds came to get them. By the time the baby bluebirds fledged, the parents were accepting mealworms directly from my hand. The babies thrived and are living their own lives now. Of course, I cannot claim to know what bluebirds think. But a couple of wild bluebirds came to regard me as a friend. We bridged a gap, to the immense satisfaction of us both. -- Diane Cooledge Porter © 2016 Diane Porter
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