Attracting Mountain Bluebirds

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Andy Wood. I'm education director for Audubon, North Carolina and I'm here to talk about how to attract mountain bluebirds. In North America we have three different kinds of bluebirds. The eastern, western and mountain. And of the three the mountain is probably the most difficult to attract to your house or to your yard. And that's because mountain bluebirds, they shun suburban dwelling. They want to be out in fairly wild open environments. So large farms would be a suitable place. Or just large expanses of land. They don't like interior forests and as their name implies the mountain bluebird likes to be in fairly high elevation environments. Typically five to ten thousand feet. So they have a narrow range because of their preference for mountain habitats. Attracting them to your yard would be the same as with the other two bluebirds in that they like cavity boxes which measure roughly five inches by five inches and eight inches high. At 1 1/2 inch hole to get in and out of the box placed about six inches from the bottom. That box design will work just fine for a mountain bluebird but you have to have a large, fairly continuous tract of open land to attract them. They're hard to bring in to a suburban area or certainly into an urban area. And that's hopefully how you can attract mountain bluebirds."