The Bluebirds (click the link to go the WhatBird site and learn about the Eastern Bluebird) have been hanging out around here for a couple weeks now. The first night I heard their call, I ran into the garage and selected my favorite dried out gourd, cut a 1 1/2" opening in the front, along with some vent holes at the top, cleaned it out and hung it on a post close to the woods. I did one last year, too. We ended up with a house wren in it, which was perfectly fine, but what I had really hoped for was a bluebird.
Want to try your own gourd house? Most farm markets will have decorative gourds in the late summer to fall. You can put them in a decorative arrangement on your porch for the fall, then when you are done with it, store it in a cool, well ventilated place for the winter. I tried hanging them from under my balcony two winters ago. That didn't go too well. They got knocked down by the winter storms, which broke several of them. I ended up with one good one by the end of the winter.
The bonus was that apparently some of them left their seeds behind in my landscaping! More likely, a greedy chipmunk collected them and buried them there. Anyway, the next spring, I noticed something growing in my new landscaping that looked a little like a squash or cucumber plant. Curious - and because I hadn't planted anything in that area yet - I let it grow. Then it got curiouser and curiouser, as they say. It started developing white blooms. Still convinced it may be a squash or a melon, I started pinching many of the blooms to force the energy into the few fruits I let grow. And WOW! did they grow! The vines completely took over that tier of my landscaping - stretching at least 20 feet with multiple vines. I ended up with a bumper crop of very cool decorative gourds. After they had hardened off (the stem starts to die away from the vine), I brought them into my garage workbench.
The key is to keep plenty of air around them (don't bunch them up) and to remove any that start rotting to the compost pile immediately. It's sort of the rotten apple effect. One bad one will start them all rotting in short order. Don't worry about surface mold or other icky stuff. That brushes right off with a stiff brush once they are dried. Only worry about the spots that go through the skin. The tops of the gourds near the stem seem to be the most susceptible to rot. Some people say they will stink up a garage or basement. I have never noticed any smell, but our garage gets a good airing out every time we open the door for a car.
By the time you hear your first soft warble of a bluebird call the next spring, they should be ready to cut. I use a hole cutting bit on our drill to do the trick. It would be ideal if you have a 1 1/2" hole bit, but we happen to have a 1" bit, so I use that and then a file and a measuring tape to open up the hole to 1 1/2". Don't go any bigger than that, because even if a small bird such as a wren or a bluebird were to take up residence there, a Cowbird could get in and lay her eggs for the poor little bluebird to raise! Place the gourd somewhere out of the way of the daily activity in your yard, but make sure you have a vantage point to get your binoculars on the entrance to see who is using it! I spent hours last year watching the wren pair raise two nestings.
Whatever type of house you use to attract the birds, enjoy watching what devoted parents they are as they come and go feeding their young. I especially like that most birds share the baby-rearing duties almost completely evenly! Their survival usually depends on it.
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