A few days ago, TheraP had a great post up about a bird's nest she had been watching. I guess it's that time of year, because I was about to post a similar story. For the past few years, a purple finch has built a nest in one of the hanging planters on our front porch. The first year we noticed her, we watched as the finch built her nest, laid her eggs, and then sat on them until they hatched a couple of weeks later. For a short time there was a lot of chirping from the baby birds as the mother returned again and again to feed them. And then suddenly they were gone, having grown large enough to fly away.

Last year we watched the same cycle unfold, and this year, as soon as the weather warmed up, we bought some new flowers for the hanging basket and hung it from its hook. Within days, the finch was back, or was it one of the offspring? We don't really know that much about birds. Every few days I would check on the nest construction, and eventually, the eggs appeared.

But this year was different. Along with the usual blue eggs (there were three of them), there was also a speckled egg. This seemed a little odd, as I didn't recall hearing of birds laying different colored eggs, but I did remember hearing about certain "parasitic" birds that lay their eggs in other birds' nests. A little bit of the Google and I found the photo posted above.

It turns out that there is a species of bird known as the "cowbird":

It is time to write about cowbirds. No nice way exists to say this: they are parasites. They once multiplied at a prodigious rate in North America and may be endangering many other bird species. They are a menace. No one knows for sure how many reside in North America but the number exceeds 40,000,000 and may be as high as 80,000,000. Mostly they are Brown-headed Cowbirds although Bronze-headed Cowbirds live in the southwest United States.

Cowbirds don't believe in nest building. It is so much easier just to use someone else's nest. Cowbirds also don't believe in child rearing. It is so much easier to let someone else do it. But they do believe in fornication. The females are egg machines and the males love to fertilize all those eggs. Because they waste no time building nests or feeding their young, they have time on their hands and they use it for lust. In low density populations they appear to be monogamous but when population densities climb, the birds are promiscuous, polygynous, or polyandrous as the mood hits them. There is some evidence that monogamous populations flock together and that promiscuous populations flock together, leading one to the unforgivable comment, that birds of a feather flock together and we ask your forgiveness for making that unforgivable comment.

Female cowbirds are devious little birds. In order to find a nest to lay her eggs, a female will sit quietly and watch for other birds building nests; or she will walk around on the ground searching for nests in use; or she may flap her wings excitedly, perhaps trying to flush birds from their nests. When she finds a nest she lays her egg in it as soon as the nest-owner is gone.

When the nest owner returns there is one more egg to brood, unless the cowbird has eaten one eggs already there. Often the cowbird egg hatches a day before the legal residents', giving the cowbird a head start on its nest mates. The baby cowbird is a little bigger and a little noisier and ends up with more food.

So now we were faced with a moral dilemma. Should we let nature take its course, at the risk of the three legitimate nestlings? Or remove the parasitic egg and give the other three a fighting chance? Maybe it seems like a strange dilemma, having a dozen eggs in a carton in the fridge, but it was a tough choice to grab a spoon and carefully remove the speckled egg from the three blue ones. It was put in the freezer so as to euthanize it in the most humane way possible (it just didn't seem right to toss this living thing in the trash).

It's been about a week now since our efforts in bird nest management. Just yesterday I checked the nest and two of the three eggs have hatched. They must have just broken free, because all that could be seen were two little pink blobs barely moving around, hardly showing any feathers at all. I haven't checked the nest yet today, as it disturbs the mother bird everytime the front door gets opened, but I hope these little nestlings are doing well, and that our interference has given them a fighting chance. We're looking forward to the chorus of chirping once the mother starts bringing food to the nest for their feeding time.