Almost every day, my resident male bluebird flies over to one of last year’s birdhouses and peeks through the hole. He sits there for about a minute, then goes inside and pokes around. He does this every day, as if something might have changed. Bluebirds, it seems, are always shopping around for next year’s nest.
I haven’t taken the old nests out of the houses yet. There’s some controversy about when to remove the old nests, but I read somewhere that sometimes bluebirds use their old houses for shelter during extreme weather. So, the old nest is still intact, and Mr. Bluebird checks it out every day, even though he won’t get started on the new nest until April of next year.
I suppose the bluebird motto, like the Boy Scouts, is “Be prepared” and they certainly will be.
