photo Western bluebirds are great backyard birds. Make sure birdhouse entrances are too small for starlings to enter.

The Western Bluebird is a pleasant and delightful bird to have in your backyard and they can also be found in higher mountains near the timberline in the summer. They are cavity nesters and most of them used woodpecker holes in dead snags until starlings were introduced which hogged most all of the nesting sites.

Bluebirds will readily nest in birdhouses, but be sure to make the entrances only 1.5 inches so the starlings can’t enter. Also, bluebirds compete with tree swallows for these same birdhouses. However, bluebirds arrive about three weeks before the swallows return in the spring, so they can have first pick for these nesting sites.

They lay four or five eggs which hatch in 14 days after which both parents are kept busy bringing in a variety of insects such as beetles, grasshoppers and caterpillars to feed their young.

Bluebirds belong to the family of thrushes, which include robins, solitaires and wood thrushes. Western bluebirds breed throughout the Pacific states, as far east as western Montana and as far south as western Texas. The males are not as strikingly beautiful as the mountain bluebirds which have bright turquoise plumage. Western bluebirds don’t actually sing, but they do have a chattering call and a short mewing sound.

Like common robins, they are efficient nesters and nearly always raise two broods per year. They tend to form small flocks where they spend the winters in the southern states. Also like robins, they eat small berries when insects are scarce.