Not only that, but they often toss out the host family’s babies in the process. “You mean, these nasty little birds let someone else do all the work, then swoop in, cut to the front of the line and take over?” Well, yeah, kind of. Here’s where the values come in, our natural human response to perceived unfairness. Most people’s least-favorite thing about the cowbirds is that they are obligate “brood parasites” that do not build their own nests, but use other birds’ nests to lay their eggs in. A buddy stopped by one day and when a cowbird vocalized he turned to me and said, “Do you have water running somewhere?” It’s kind of like brook water over clean stones. My favorite thing about the cowbird is its warbly, beautiful, difficult to describe call. The egg of interest here was that of the Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater), which is a common bird around these parts and very pretty in its blackbirdy sort of way. I think a little background is called for here. There would be no escaping this existential decision, this examination of values and subsequent action or inaction that would have consequences either way. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here, and neither would you.” I posted the above photo on Facebook and queried friends about how we should handle this-let things work themselves out or remove the cowbird eggs and give the cardinals a fighting chance? Most replies were pro-cardinal and anti-cowbird, but then one old friend from my college days posted, “ I am curious, why mess with natural selection? I am all for survival of the fittest. The cardinals were fighting back, though, and pretty soon a second large egg showed up.Ī dilemma. It had an amazing resemblance to the cardinals’ egg, but was smaller and had some subtle variations in color and pattern.Ĭowbird.
Soon, on one of our quick excursions to look into the nest, we found the other egg. Finally, we hung a sheet over the window to preserve the birds’ peace and harmony and just peeked carefully on occasion. When she left of her own accord, we would sneak out, peer into the nest and snap a photo or two and duck back inside before anybody got too upset. We watched, moving slowly past the window and trying not to frighten the mama bird off her egg. The lovestruck pair had chosen a planter in our entryway for their domicile, a scant foot or two from the door, and in no time at all had populated it with an egg.
the garage and back door could get us in and out almost as fast, and using them wouldn’t disturb the nesting cardinals in the front. We were resigned to stop using our front door for a while.
This time our backyard and garage had become our main way in and out of the house. And now it was happening again, but not with wrens. Between disturbance of the nest by us and interference by cowbirds, life was tough for young feathered parents in these parts. But we did our best and managed to help one out of three nests actually succeed in fledging young wrens. Which makes getting in and out of our house a little trickier than normal. Carolina Wren nest in plant stand in our backyard.
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