One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other . . .

Does this picture look familiar? Notice the bigger/rounder egg that doesn't seem to fit with the others in this nest . . . then take a gander at my picture from yesterday's post. Thanks to the helpful comments from fellow bloggers Mamela on the Mountain and Hil, I've discovered that the two "odd" eggs in our latest bird nest are eggs from a cowbird. And it's got me pretty darn mad.

Cow Birds are the abandoners of the bird world. They fly around looking for nests built by other birds, lay an egg or two in the other bird's nest during the predawn hours of the morning, and then leave their eggs for this other bird mom to raise and feed. They pick the nests of smaller birds so that when the cowbird young hatch, they'll be the biggest and crowd out the smaller birds. Sometimes, when the cowbird mom lays its eggs after the original bird's eggs are already laid, she'll pierce a few of the smaller eggs with her beak, insuring that they won't survive. Or she'll just remove or eat an egg or two. She'll lay up to 10 or 20 eggs in other nests during one cycle.

Most of the time, the cowbird young manage to hog most of the food causing the other baby birds to starve. The cowbird babies will eventually be bigger than the house finch mom who made the nest in the first place. There is no way five babies can fit in the tiny nest I took the picture of! I have definitely observed this spring that it is a cruel, cruel bird world! I am never for parents who abdicate their responsibility and sit by watching while others do their work. I am never for bullying of any kind - even when it's bird bullying. I'm never for disrupting the seemingly peaceful nature of family life. I am certainly never for making a parent choose between their child and someone else's.

The Hubby's suggestion was that we just remove the two cowbird eggs from the nest. I was on board with that until I read that the cowbird mom will come back and sabotage the rest of the nest if her eggs are disturbed. That means she's out there somewhere spying on me and she's got a big X on my hanging basket.

Put your heads together fellow bloggers and see if you can come up with a solution to our latest bird conundrum. I haven't told the kids about this cowbird situation yet. I'm hoping I don't have to because they find dead bird babies on our porch in the next week or two.