Tireless, Devoted, & Exceptionally Good Looking
Meet The Bluebirds
May Day.
Not many could argue with a straight face that Western Bluebirds (Sialia mexicana), are gregarious and welcoming creatures. They really are not. And except for one’s willingness to construct and place a few, simple, wooden nest boxes along fencerows and atop posts sparsely scattered across some wide meadow while they’re vacationing out of town for the winter (or maybe just cleaning out and repairing the ones already there), the simple truth about bluebirds as I’ve come to know it is that they would really prefer that you leave them the hell alone. I like that about them.
Are they beautiful? Lordy, yes!
Are they contemplative? Again, yes. Well, maybe. At least they seem so to me.
Are they generally calm and resolute? Certainly.
Tireless and devoted? As parents they are, without question. Or equal!
So, to find a nesting pair of Western Bluebirds who wasted almost none of those tireless energies bothering over my human eyes and camera’d presence, well that, that was something rather rare in my experience. Of course, your mileage could differ. They might sing you a happy tune and alight on your shoulders and tie ribbons in your hair, beaming the entire time. They certainly seemed to fawn over Snow White that way.
Obviously, I’m still a little mystified, still looking these gift birdies in the mouth, trying to sort out the “Why this time?” of it all.
It occurs to me that I may have played my hand somewhat more deftly this time than others in the past, having located a nest box with hungry nestlings inside and lucking out with an exquisitely calm and handsome pair of parents ferrying meals of spiders and millipedes and caterpillars to them. I’m also much clearer on the importance of my own energetic cloud these days and the importance of showing up, angst free.
These rare two proved far more dedicated to the ‘growing-baby’ appetites of their nestlings than any inherent need to mess with me by flying far away and waiting me out, defying each of my clumsy attempts to approach stealthily and observe them at close range. I’ve been humbled by bluebirds many times before. Call me ‘bluebird shy.’
Those hungry babies are an absolute essential element in all this, for they are the magnet that does not move. And so, they become the overriding reason these devoted parents tamp down their protective and general dislike of humans to fly past me, delivering meals less than a high schooler’s long jump away from their nest, over and over. Without those babies, I guarantee I’d have been sitting there in the dirt muttering to myself, yet again, peering deeply into my binoculars and trying to make out the shapes and attitudes of these same bluebirds giving me side eye from at least a hundred yards. Not even slightly kidding.
That first day we merely contemplated one another from a safe distance. (They had spotted me, anyway, long before I spotted them so there was no point in trying to play it cool.) And so we simply watched one another. I did not approach, not even a single footstep for our first few, brief encounters. I tarried at a distance, instead, letting them slowly grow accustomed to my presence. I wanted them to know that I understood their parental situation and nest’s location, wanted them to see me watching without threatening and let them sit with that for a while.
I wanted my behavior to say, “I come in peace.”
Next morning when the world was still cool and they, quite busy with breakfast procurement sorties for their little ones, I openly walked back into their meadow in the same clothes I’d been wearing the day before (continuity), moving slowly along a dirt two-track to about an eighty foot distance, then dropped to my hands and knees and began slowly, very slowly wandering in their nest box’s general direction, crawling a step or two, then pausing, changing direction, slightly, sitting, busying myself with nearby grasses and wildflowers for a bit, then another crawl-step or two, a casual glance in their nest’s direction and so on.
Several times over that next half-hour of crawling and hopefully acting unlike any human they’d ever encountered, down on all fours, inching and sniffing, and grooming without attempts to conceal myself, I turned to check in with them, one sitting atop a distant fence post, and the other, atop a broken nest box a few feet to its right, or sometimes both studying my curious amble from atop a yet-unoccupied birdhouse a pair of tree swallows were beginning to covet. Those same eyes that can spot a feeding caterpillar on a swaying leaf in a breezy meadow at thirty paces studied me between short procurement flights into the adjacent meadow in pursuit of yet another nutritious spider, or cutworm, or winged insect that could then be ferried to one of those insistent, wide-open mouths concealed within the little nest box that I was ever so gradually and nonchalantly approaching.
I could sense their curiosity and reticence about me, but I could also feel that magnetic, parental pull, those hungry little beings that they had made, huddled and expectant within that wooden box, wired atop that metal fencepost.
Momma Blue braved me first, flying in silently, landing on the roof and then studying me for at least a minute before leaping into the air, flaring her wings and tail, and contorting herself through an aerial one-eighty. She landed at the circular nest opening, feet first, gave me one more quick study and popped inside.
Minutes passed. Several minutes.
She peered out, once for maybe thirty seconds then disappeared again. More minutes.
I waited patiently.
I’ve literally got all day, I smiled.
Finally, Blue Boy, who’d been watching all of this from a distance, flew in, leggy spider in mouth and flared a landing on the roof. Momma poked her head out again and he peered over the edge. Bingo. She was not going to leave that nest with me parked so close until reinforcements had arrived. Papa had food to deliver and then he could stand guard while she went hunting for another fat spider. Boom. She shot out of that nest box like a bullet headed west.
Daddy Blue waited a moment then leapt into the air, flared a one-eighty and perched at the hole, peering in. One quick look over his shoulder in my direction and in he went. But unlike Mom, Papa didn’t tarry in there, fluffing the pillows and reading naptime stories to the kids. He deposited his spider into one of those unseen, gaping mouths, squeezed out the hole and made his way back onto the roof where then he stood sentry for at least a minute and a half before making an executive decision about his assigned sentry duties, …Nuh-uhh.
And away he flew.
Just me and the kids, again.
Apparently I was not so scary after all.
Once the Bluebirds had tested me, junketing in and out without any special weirdness or threatening moves, once they’d heard my voice speaking softly in their direction, reassuring them that everything was going to be ok and that I was not there to do any sort of harm, they seemed to relax. Noticeably.
After that first flyby and meal delivery, and each watchful one that followed they seemed to sense more and more clearly that I was not a threat to their family. And so I inched just a little closer each time they flew away, until I was maybe thirty-five feet away and positioned at about seven-o-clock (nest box orientation), to get the best backlighting effect on their flaring, acrobatic wings.
I imposed myself into their lives for maybe an hour and a half that first morning, most of that time spent sitting in the wildflowers and dirt …waiting. They flew in, usually one at a time at intervals between four and fifteen minutes, bug hunting being a rather intimate and inexact science. When enough time had passed, when I had several of the sweetest bluebird shots, in-camera, I crawled twenty or so feet directly away from the nest before awkwardly standing up and hobbling my pins-and-needles feet and legs away.
And there they were again, perched up on the roof of that still-unclaimed nest box along the far fenceline, watching my every move.
When I was sixty to eighty feet from the nest, Papa Blue swooshed right past me, less than three feet off the ground and an arm’s length away, headed for the nest, an extra fat centipede swaying in his trailing breeze. Strangely, this near pass felt a little like acceptance, though I could be wrong.
Next morning, half an hour earlier than before, I repeated the process, but walked at least twenty feet closer to the nest before dropping to my knees in the dew-damp meadow, and this time approaching even more from nest’s left, hoping for even more dramatic light.
Moments after settling into a comfortable catcher’s crouch at a distance of maybe twenty-five feet, Papa Blue swooped past, made some short, identifying little bluebird comment in passing and landed on the nest box’s roof. Another bluebird word or two and Mamma appeared in the circular doorway, peering out.
“Well good morning, Lady Blue! Good morning Blue Daddy” I greeted them softly. I had not known she was in there.
Pops took wing then and maneuvered to the front of the box, there to hand off his breakfast offering for her to deliver to the nestling of her choosing. Then he was back to the rooftop like one of Santa’s reindeer for two or three minutes, looking protectively in all directions before Momma Blue peered out, considered the world within her purview and disappeared into the shadows, yet again. A minute later, she poked her head up a second time, glanced briefly toward me, scanned south and west, then bolted, wings only unfolding as she glided, gaining distance and speed.
Dad was away next, no more than thirty seconds later.
So it’s just me and the kidlets again, I grin and will be for probably at least five minutes. A pair of Pygmy Nuthatches keep peck, peck, pecking a nest hole in the snag above and behind me, a welcome distraction, so I turn and offer a polite, “Good morning.”
No reply.
Nuthatches!
I pick a crawling, eighth-inch wide, reddish-brown tick off my pant leg (they are unnervingly abundant), partially severing it between finger and dirty thumbnail, then shift around in an attempt to stave off another leg cramp. The air is at least ten degrees warmer than the previous morning, which is nice but the dew much heavier. My knees are a little muddy and my pant legs and hiking boots, wet.
I have offered myself the luxury of not needing to get to anywhere else or do anything else this morning, so apart from the slight inconveniences of sitting in the dirt in damp pants with the crawling ants and the ticks, while trying to hold a camera and long lens steady, I am wildly content. There is absolutely nowhere I would rather be.
And so a few more hours pass …and trust builds, if somewhat osmotically and the sun climbs through the sky moving higher and to the southwest, and two of the calmest, most beautiful bluebirds I have ever encountered fly sortie after sortie out into the far reaches of a mountainside meadow gathering protein-rich, bug critters and then ferry them to a small wooden box atop a studded t-post, beside a three foot pine stump. And I make pictures of it all and I talk to them, and sigh, and pinch myself now and again, just to make sure I am not dreaming.
And for the next two mornings after that I repeat this same process, each time adjusting my position and distance in the early morning light until, finally I have been granted calm, acquiescent access to their nest site from as little as fifteen feet distance without a single, fretful or dirty look.
Turns out, fifteen feet was a little closer than I really wanted, given the lens I was using and the amount of ‘ b r e a t h i n g — r o o m’ I wanted around my subjects flying into and out of the photos, so I backed off five or six feet for the last hour of that third morning, which may have seemed like a small offering of respect. Whatever their perception, they seemed completely comfortable with me sitting there for one to two hours each of those next two mornings (days three and four), in my muted, meadow-colored clothes and best, non-threatening postures; pure, bird-nerdy bliss.
And so, absent all the bother and concealment of a portable blind I was able to serve dirty-kneed witness to the countless devotions of a bluebird couple beneath azure skies, gathering meals and taunting tree swallows, and taking occasional, chase-and-play breaks in a wildflower meadow, all while dutifully raising their little, wild-blue family within a wooden box on the eastern flanks of Oregon’s Blue Mountains.
That’s a lot of blue.
Not many could argue with a straight face that Western Bluebirds are generally gregarious and welcoming creatures. They really are not. But they are tireless and devoted, and ever so beautiful. They are complex and familial …feathered beings who adapt quickly and maintain focus, and certainly deserve better than pigeonholing as ‘elusive’ and ‘antisocial.’
I learned that just recently …had my mind changed, by a pair of young parents.
Bluebirds, actually.
Yes, really.
Who possibly could make that sort of thing up?
Further readings:
The Bluebird of Tolerance: They are calm and astute observers who don’t really want anything to do with you.
Growiser Website: a 260 acre native plant conservation area in Northeast Oregon.
There is a lot of talk going around about how beneficial spending time in nature can be for modern day humans.
David, your essay this morning is the proof. Just reading it calmed my nerves and centered my being.
Total emersion therapy, once removed.
And just like that you serve up the magic that brings hope and joy Dave. You made my day. Thank you