Western Bluebirds Invade my Neighborhood

By Mel Carriere

I had a surprise waiting for me in my palm trees this morning.  Since it was a surprise with feathers attached that would seem to narrow it down to some sort of species of parrot or another colorful tropical variety, but the winged visitors to my Queen Palm trees happened to be a pair of Western Bluebirds.

In my own experience here in San Diego County, Western Bluebirds are more common on high mountain meadows.  My first run in with them was at one such mountain meadow at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, probably 50 miles outside the city limits.  I don't think that Sialia mexicana is an exclusively montane species, but just seems to do better the farther away it gets from human civilization because it does not have to compete for nesting space with Starlings, a very aggressive winged species that follows Homo sapiens wherever it goes and bullies its way into bird houses meant for Bluebirds.

If my brush with this thrush was any indication of an overall trend, perhaps this means that Bluebirds are sneaking their way back into the city limits and we can soon expect them as regular visitors to our yards, including yards like mine that feature palm trees, of which they appear to be peculiarly fond.  When you've seen this bird hawking for bugs beneath a canopy of Sugar Pines it just seems strange to find it getting comfortable among palm fronds, sort of like stumbling across Tom Hanks and his volleyball inhabiting an island where you were expecting dark skinned Polynesians.  But the Cornell Lab of Ornithology assures us:  "Look for Western Bluebirds in open woodland, both coniferous and deciduous.  They also live in backyards, burned areas, and farmland, from sea level far into the mountains."  That pretty much includes everywhere, so I haven't made any great ground breaking discoveries here.

I'm not saying I haven't seen Bluebirds in my city before.  On a few occasions I have observed them on residential lawns in the older part of Chula Vista, the city where I live, and once I spotted the species on the playground of a church school.  Closer to home, from time to time I will come across a Bluebird or two in the park where I used to jog, which is just a few blocks from my home.

Despite these previous encounters in my city, I can attest that Western Bluebirds are new to the neighborhood where I have lived for 15 years, and I know this because I am completely attuned to the local bird sounds.  Therefore, when I heard that strange chattering in the treetops this morning I realized right away it was something different, and my eyes immediately turned skyward, pointing into the depths of the palm fronds that were poorly masking the ascent of the Sun in the west.

At first I assumed they were probably Hooded Orioles, a not very common visitor to my yard but one that has nested in my neighbor's palm trees from time to time.  This really didn't make any sense, however, because February is just too early for Orioles, even in sunny San Diego.  Not satisfied with the Orioles theory, I kept my eyes pointed to the branches for another hopeful moment, but the sun was just too blinding so I had to turn away.

Being in danger of getting to work late I was about to give this business up up as one of those frustrating bird encounters in which the avian participants are just not as enthusiastic as I am about the process. Then, almost as if they were deliberately trying to announce their red carpet arrival, the Bluebirds swooped down and landed on my neighbor's minivan, parked about ten feet away from my own car.  Here the pair remained for at least twenty seconds, and for the life of me it was like they wanted to be sure they were properly identified and cataloged by me before going about their other important bird business.

The strong light coming from the West made the birds a little blurry to my tender, groggy morning eyes, so I'm not sure if I was seeing two males, two females, or one of each.  Yet I couldn't have mistaken the blue on rust combination, and I am highly gratified that this newest addition to my neighborhood list, the Western Bluebird, is such an obliging bird, always willing to stop and pose for a photograph even if the potential photographer is a bumbling derp with a camera and never has a lens at the ready when he needs to.


Image attributed to:  "Western.male" by Blalonde - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western.male.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Western.male.jpg

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