How Do Bluebirds Protect Themselves?

Video Transcript

"Hi! My Andy Wood. I'm education director for Audubon, North Carolina. I'm here to talk about, how do bluebirds protect themselves? Bluebirds are as their name applies bright blue colored members of the thrush family, related to robins. And in this country, we have three different kinds, the Eastern bluebird, the Western bluebird and the mountain bluebird. All three of those birds nest in cavities, abandoned woodpecker holes, dead snags that have an opening inside them or bluebird box that somebody puts around their house or farm. Bluebirds have a lot of enemies including some snakes especially tree-climbing rat snakes and raccoons but especially cats. House cats eat a lot of birds in this country and the only way a bluebird can protect itself from something as foreboding as a cat or raccoon or a snake is by trying to bluff it. So, when a bluebird is approached by a predator at the cavity box, the bluebird will emit very loud chattering calls, it might flap its wings at the animal and basically trying to bluff the animal into thinking the bluebird is something large. The other way it protects itself may seem like cowardice. When something approaches the cavity, the birds will very quickly leave the box trying to escape from a potential predator and maybe lure the predator away from the cavity. One other very helpful thing that the adult birds do when they're young inside that cavity excrete fickle matter, their waste. The adult bird will pick up that little packet of feces and fly away with the cavity with it so that the nest box doesn't smell of baby birds. Smell is one way that predators can find the young and so if you have a bluebird box around your yard and you want to look at it, that's fine, but try not to leave all over that box because your scent can attract predators especially a raccoon. And that's a little bit about how bluebirds protect themselves."