My first Eastern Bluebird

by Linda Heitz
(Lutz, Florida )

My First Bluebirds

I swear these blue birds were meant for me because I live in Florida and my only daughter moved to New York 10 years ago.

She also has a bluebird tattoo. I'm totally fascinated with these birds.

I actually live in a condo on the third story and these birds decided to build a nest in my dryer vent.

Not sure if this has ever been heard of.

I was extremely honored by the fact that they picked my balcony to build a nest even though it was going to inconvenience me to not use my dryer.

The first time before I was aware that they were building a nest in my dryer vent I started my dryer and went out to water my plants.

I saw all these Pine needles and moss and feathers laying on my floor on the balcony.

So I actually messed up the beginning of their first nest.

I began to see these birds just sitting talking and singing on my balcony.

Which intrigued me because they were a unusual sounding almost like a parrot. They started visiting every day.

First thing I do when I wake up in the morning is to open my blinds in the living room and the male bird, which I called Nemo, would be sitting on my balcony looking at me.

Before I knew it they were building a nest.

I couldn't figure out why they were coming to my balcony every day.

There were always two of them the male and the female. The female I named Dori.

Dori started acting with a very strange behavior and hitting my sliding glass door. I read online what to do so I put all this tape on my windows.

I hung clothes on the windows. I'm sure my neighbors thought I was very strange and into some voodoo.

This went on for several weeks then Dori started sitting on the ledge of one of my windows pecking at it flapping her wings.

I didn't quite understand what that was all about.

I went and bought Mealworms and they didn't like it.

I went and bought a bluebird nest box hoping that they would change to that instead of my dryer vent but of course they didn't.

I did find it very interesting to see Nemo in the beginning showing off with some stuffing in his beak.

I also enjoyed seeing Nemo feeding Dori insects.

One day it looked like he had a live roach in his beak.

Now all of a sudden I don't see the female.

I'm hoping that she's nesting.

I'm afraid to get a tall ladder and go look up there and I'm worried to death about her being OK because it has to be hot.

And I didn't see Nemo at all today.

I'm so wrapped up in these birds it's amazing how attached you can get. I just hope they're OK.

I know nothing about the eastern bluebirds and would love to reach out to somebody that could help me to understand this process.

And what to do and maybe check to see if everything's OK.