Saturday I decided to take it easy and play with my new IPhone while relaxing in my hammock. I happened to notice a baby bird all by its self. At first I thought it was a baby Robin, even though it looked like a Sparrow it was much too big to be a Sparrow.
The next day on the ground by my thistle feeders, I actually saw a bird feeding this chick. It was clearly not the chick of the bird feeding it because it was almost twice as large. The mother bird was a Chipping Sparrow.
So I at once called San to tell her of my birding moment. I am now trying to take pictures while talking to San, but this was no easy task. The thistle feeders are outside my kitchen window over my sink. So I can't see the ground from the window so I was snapping pictures blindly, and they actually looked as though someone blind had taken them. The most I got was a tail in the shot. Every time I went outside to take a picture the mother bird flew away. I finally wised up and stood on a stool to snap some pictures. So the mother kept coming and going so in the meantime I talked to San. I got so excited when the mother came back that trying to juggle my new phone and my SLR camera that I dropped the camera and scared away the mother bird yet again.
Finally she came back and I was able to get some decent photos of the small Chipping Sparrow feeding this rather large baby bird.
It wasn't until later that night, that I realized what type of bird this chick was. Earlier in the day I saw alot of Brown-headed Cowbirds, and it donned on me that these birds lay their eggs in other birds nests to raise their young for them. So as usual I did a little research and this is what I found.
The Brown-headed Cowbird is a stocky blackbird with a fascinating approach to raising its young. Females forgo building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds, abandoning their young to foster parents, usually at the expense of at least some of the host’s own chicks.
The Cowbird will try to lay their eggs in nest's with similar colored eggs.
Cowbird eggs hatch faster than other species eggs, giving cowbird nestlings a head start in getting food from the parents. Young cowbirds also develop at a faster pace than their nest mates, and they sometimes toss out eggs and young nestlings or smother them in the bottom of the nest. As you can see in the picture, the large egg on top is from a Cowbird, and the smaller ones are from a Sparrow.
This was pretty exciting for a birder that is. I haven't seen them since, so I am glad I stayed home on Saturday.
With its brilliant orange and black plumage, the Baltimore Oriole's arrival is eagerly awaited by birders each spring migration. Its preference for open areas with tall trees has made it a common inhabitant of parks and suburban areas. San's neighbor has a fruit bearing tree that attracted the Oriole. The "orioles" of the Americas were named after similarly-appearing birds in the Old World. The American orioles are not closely related to the true orioles in the family Oriolidae. They are more closely related to blackbirds and meadowlarks. Both New and Old world orioles are brightly colored with red, yellow, and black; have long tails and long pointed bills; build hanging, woven nests; and prefer tall trees around open areas. At one time, this species and the Bullock's Oriole, Icterus bullockii, were considered to be a single species, the Northern Oriole.
