Garden Pictures Pictures by DiOhio (541 photos)

Love this

Sounds like mama is a bit picky :)

Sounds like my home...lol~

Wow! Thats absolutely beautiful! How lucky to have birds like that where you live.

LOve the colour of the bird.

Fantastic pic!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great Pic. Love the action shot. We get more cardinals around here, but a bluejay every once in a while..

Oh how I envy you!.. Wish the bluebirds were more plentiful here..No wonder we have the mythic bluebird of happiness...makes you smile just to see them! . you mentioned rearing a colony of meal worms...I buy batch after batch of meal worms for my hamster...but always end up with a box full of beetles... can you tell me how to establish my own colony? That would be very interesting and a real money-saver! Oh and bluebird ladies are DIY and know what things bluebird men are good for, and nest building isn't one of them!lol.

Thanks everyone !

Lori, I'm told that some mealworms that you buy are sterile and won't reproduce, but you can try. Just get a plastic container and half fill it with yellow corn meal. I add some oatmeal too (not instant). Then put a few thick slices of apple in it (that's how they get their moisture) and let them go. You get beetles because that's the adult form of the mealworm. Let the adults mate and lay eggs. I put a few pieces of napkin or paper towel on top of the corn meal because the beetles like to go inbetween the layers and lay their eggs. The beetles only live a few weeks and then die. Soon you'll see tiny tiny little mealworms. They molt (not sure how many times) and get bigger with each moult. Every few months I'll add some fresh corn meal. Take out the pieces of apple every 2 weeks or so and add new. Maybe once a year I'll pick out all of the mealworms, paper towels and beetles and move them to a container with all new corn meal.

The one problem with having a colony for a long time is somehow it developes mites. Very very tiny mites that look like a dust particle. You can hardly see them. When there gets to be a lot of mites, they're start wanting to leave the container so now I have my plastic container inside a larger plastic container that has 2" or so of bleach water. It's like a moat. The mites drown in the moat. I had to learn this the hard way and had mites wondering all over my table.