(...) Our most beautiful bird is the bunting. They are the closest thing to technicolor that I've ever seen. However, they are extremely shy and don't live in the cities. (...) Anybody have any experience with that?
Dave:
We have indigo buntings that have taken up in our bird houses. I don't know about their nesting habits where you are, but here, they prefer low-laying brush (I have a hedge-row with a few bushes, some trees and a lot of ivy growing in it).
I'm not sure how we got them in our 3 birdhouses (Last count, we have 4 male birds, but that is just how many i have seen at one time). However, i know that the nests are not all in birdhouses, and that at least 2 of the families live in the hedge row.
Our houses are at varying heights, in various "terrain." Two of our 3 houses have buntings. one is hanging from an L bracket off of the neighbor's fence (directly to the left of the brush line), and is susceptible to the billions of squirrels I also have (thanks to having the largest oak trees in illinois....), but for some reason they seem to leave the nest alone. The second is very high up in a massive oak i have in the front yard, not near that brush line at all.
your guess is as good as mine as to how to get them to nest near your feeders. They do use my feeder, whenever the tree rats aren't trying to get to it, and I usually see them at the feeder which is also attached to the fence, about 20 yards from the birdhouse.
I do see them much more often coming out of the hedge row/brush line than any other place, and I know i am blessed to have so many on my relatively small lot.
I also have downy woodpeckers, redbellied woodpeckers, and in the neighboring woods i have at least 4 owls of varying types which often come to hunt the tree-rats. One, i am convinced, is a horned owl, just because it is massive (although the wife, the one educated in these things, says i am crazy, and its more likely to just be a very large type of barn owl or maybe a barred owl). In the winters, we are also lucky enough to have the bald eagles nesting on the mississippi bluffs, who are experts at hunting our tree rats. my little 2 acres is a bird-watcher's dream.
good luck with your nests, dave, and if anybody knows how to convince an owl to stay for keeps, let me know.
-skinny
edit:
It might also be useful to mention that usually when i see all of the buntings together they are in my mulberry tree.
