What a wonderful way to begin a new year-three fluffy male bluebirds fluttering about outside our back picture window. If it weren’t for the glass, I could reach right out and grab them, they are so close. They flew in to our bird feeder near the window with a flock of assorted winter birds: finches, phoebes, titmice and chickadees.

I’ve seen bluebirds as late as Christmas in the past, but this is my first midwinter sighting. They are such a spectacular sight; their colors seem even more vivid against the drab trees and the bright white snow. “The blue-bird carries the sky on his back,” Thoreau wrote in his Journal of September 7, 1851.

Peterson’s Field Guide for Eastern Birds shows the northern edge of the bluebirds’ year-round range along the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts and out to the Cape, so it isn’t as if they forgot to fly to South America. And these bluebirds looked perky and happy.

After great success last summer with a “full house”­both bluebirds and swallows successfully fledging their broods in our garden bird boxes and the wrens successful in their gourd house nearby, we added another bluebird box in the garden this fall.

Since bluebirds are insect eaters, I’m delighted to have them at work picking off the garden pests. Just days after we finally got the extra box up in November before deep frosts, five bluebirds stopped by to check out the boxes, and one actually sat on the roof of the new box. I have heard that they can be suspicious of a new box, so I was happy they’d at least perched on it. We carefully cleaned the three old boxes in the fall, removing the debris of sticks typical of house wrens and the softer nesting materials­pine needles, grasses and feathers of the bluebird. I read that it is important to clean out the boxes to remove parasites.

We learned just how important two years ago, when after brushing out the debris, my husband exclaimed, “What’s that? It just moved!” He was looking at a disgusting black blob about the size of a small bean attached to the floor of the box. Arrrgggh! We were looking at live blowfly larvae, a nasty parasite of bluebirds. Blowflies are often the reason a second bluebird brood is unsuccessful. The larvae (maggots) in the boxes crawl out at night to drink the blood of the little nestlings­the ugly side of nature!

Despite such predators, we’ve had bluebirds nesting in the garden boxes for about 20 years. They love our open field surrounded by shrubs and woods. Our gardens, with lots of fence posts, old sunflower stalks and some young Christmas trees, attract them because they can land and spot insects from these perches three or four feet from the ground. There’s lots of food for them in our garden, a good reason for not using pesticides.

They typically arrive at the bird boxes in March, when the ground is still snow-covered. But in spite of the snow, they get busy building their nests, beating out competing birds such as swallows and house wrens. This is the reason we have several boxes.

Last summer the swallows did arrive later and began swooping all about the boxes. I ran to the garden to shoo them away, but they swooped and dive-bombed me. Happily they figured out that they were to nest in the empty box and didn’t chase out the nesting bluebirds. The two species lived in peace and harmony.

Fledging is exciting to watch and I luckily caught fledging day for each of the three species. I’ve seen the bluebirds fledge before, although I wasn’t sure of the reason for all the twittering and fluttering about the box. Once they learn to fly, bluebirds leave the box and disappear into the surrounding shrubs.

I was working in the garden the day the swallows fledged, and it was truly a spectacular show. The parents chased the flock of young swallows about for what seemed to me an exhausting length of time, swooping in great arcs and circles with NO stopping. Of course I assumed that it would take several days for them to perfect their soaring techniques, and was waiting for it to happen the next day, but that was it. They were gone.

The wrens’ gourd house is attached to a tree branch so the fledging wrens flew about the tree branches making lots of noise as they perfected their flying skills. They, too, were gone in a day. So now I’m waiting for another winter bluebird sighting. One theory is that over-wintering bluebirds have the advantage of the best bluebird boxes in the spring. The first brood generally seems to be the more successful. So perhaps my bluebirds are so happy with their life here that they didn’t want to risk losing their homes by flying south for the winter. I guess they hide in the shrubs for the winter, surviving on berries and maybe frozen insects.

By Anne Krantz, Master Gardener & Community Tree Steward