Swallows displace bluebirds?!

[Ufatz]

A few weeks back a couple bluebirds arrived and began checking in to their usual houses. Then the swallows came-more than in the past. Now we have an abundance of swallows and have not seen a bluebird. We usually have at least half a dozen. And, we have a bazillion R.Wing B'birds too. Are we doing something to change this? We normally had a nice mixture of bluebirds,wrens,nuthatches,peewees,finchs (several varieties)orioles,hummingibrds etc. We live on a small lake and have about a quarter mile of woods and wetland around us.

Just wondering if what we put out for feed is making this change in our population.

[M.T. Bucket]

I'm not sure if I can tell you exactly what's going on with your birds, but I can tell you this:

I have heard that the best way to accomodate tree swallows and eastern bluebirds is to group your boxes in pairs. That is, if you have six boxes out, place them in three separate pairs (maybe 15' apart within a pair?). What I have heard is that the tree swallows will take over the first box, but they are so territorial that they won't allow other tree swallows to nest in the closest box, leaving it open for bluebirds, which they will tolerate.

If you have changed your feeding setup, you may very well change your birds, though that wouldn't affect the peewees and wrens. I'm not sure where you're at, but we have very few peewees, wrens, orioles, or hummingbirds up north yet. I'd say you need to give it a couple of weeks yet to see if things have really changed. Large groups of birds can come and go during migration and make things seem out of the ordinary. If you still notice a vastly different mix of birds in June, your feeding setup, natural population fluctuations, a change in water level in your wetlands, adjacent development, or just random chance could be the cause.