This is a picture I took tonight of the bird nest. You can see 1 baby bird and 1 egg.
You may recall in the previous pictures there were 5 eggs, 3 were smaller and white with brown speckles and 2 were larger blue with brown speckles. Sharon said she thought that the larger eggs were cowbird eggs and since I had already suspected as much, it simply confirmed what I was thinking. I did some research and decided that the 2 larger eggs were cowbird eggs. Now I realize that God designed and nature developed birds and animals to fit into specific niches. And in order for cowbirds to follow the large migratory bison and cattle herds to help keep them free of insects, some bird needed to foster the babies as the parents wouldn't be able to get back to the nests to do so.
Unfortunately as a human, I can't leave things alone. Particularly as there are no migratory cattle herds here, all the cattle are in their fences and the parent cowbirds can very well raise their own babies,
If the cowbird babies would co-exist with the host bird babies, I wouldn't have a problem with the situation, but they hatch first, are larger and will deliberately kill the true baby birds. So, Monday, after the 2 eggs blue eggs and 1 white egg had hatched, I could tell that the 2 were much larger and crowding out the smaller baby. the other 2 small eggs weren't hatching either. I removed the 2 larger babies and hoped that the other 2 white eggs would hatch. Tonight there is only 1 white egg left and I doubt it will hatch. Mama bird spent too much time off the nest trying to feed the cowbird babies.
The baby bird in the photo is almost twice the size it was on Monday .
no promises, but maybe next post there will be tatting again.
Oh, I will be on the way to Omaha NE this weekend. I will be meeting my future son-in-law's family and since they will be creating the silk flower bouquets and also my daughters real flower bouquet for the wedding, it will be nice to get together to be sure we are on the same wave length concerning the filler flowers for the bouquets.
Omaha is a 6 hr drive from here and my daughter and her fiance will have to drive an additional 4 hours to get here to pick me up. They live in St Paul MN so there is no direct route to Omaha anyway, either way they go west then south or south then west it takes them about the same amount of time.
