My concern is about some bright orange buckets that I have near one of the new houses. Any idea if that would deter them from choosing this house?

Chris, this is my third year with Bluebirds and will be my third year training them. We never seem to get the same pair back for some reason. Bluebirds are drop feeders meaning they perch somewhere and watch below them for bugs and then drop down on them. You need to watch where you Blues normally perch for bugs. Put a dish of live wiggly worms underneath that perch. Hopefully they will perch there and see the worms, once they find that there are worms in that dish you can slowly move it little by little to wherever you want it. Today is day 2 of trying to train our new blues who now have four eggs and are incubating. They are further away from the house than previous years but hopefully we can get them to find the mealworms. Right now I am putting them under a tree near the nestbox that I see them perching on. So far no takers though, at least the Robins haven't found them either though as unfortuantely they will be trained right along with the Blues. Hopefully ours find them soon as I don't want to leave worms so near the nestbox for very long. Good luck to you! Donna

pife, Painting nestboxes is not necessary, but if you want to preserve the wood, you only need to paint the outside. To keep them cool, use a light color. Painting the exterior of the box white or light tan (before nesting season begins) can help reduce interior temperatures. Here is a great site for reference about nestboxes, safe setup, and monitoring. You can also do a site search there for more info about paint and nestboxes. BlueBars Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.sialis.org/index.html

I don't feed them, Marti, but I do have houses for them (which I did not get cleaned out this year). They eat the berries off my hackberry and that is the only time I get to see them up close. They are very shy at my house and I am usually seeing them only from a distance.