Not really, since over 80% of bird species share parenting duties equally between the male and female parent. Bluebirds are no exception. And males and females seek out mates more likely to share these responsibilities, which in many species can be determined by the intensity or distinctiveness of markings - so the bluer bluebird gets the guy (or gal). And shared parenting yields better results fostering species survival.

I’ve been watching this pair at one of our bird houses since they arrived a month ago. Most bluebirds mate for life and up to 50% return to the same nesting spot each year, so I imagine they are the same couple as last year or even the pair I wrote about here in 2020. Divorces occur much less frequently than with humans and usually only because of repeated nesting failures or when females try to nest with more than one male. Our pair seems so familiar and comfortable with each other that they could not possibly have just met.

Given that bluebirds mate for life, it is interesting that when nesting is complete and the babies have fledged, the parents no longer hang out together. In our area from which they will migrate in the fall, they will do so separately only to return to our yard next spring and rediscover each other. Perhaps absence also makes the bluebird heart grow fonder. Their juvenile offspring, on the other hand, will migrate together joining large flocks heading to the southeast.

What Gorgeous Thing by Mary Oliver

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.