Another beautiful nest in the berries, this one has a cowbird egg. The Brown-headed Cowbird is a brood parasite,and does not build their own nest, interestingly there are 220 different birds that they utilize to raise their young. They only lay one egg per nest but will lay up to 40 eggs a year. They have been known to chase the nest's egglayer off her nest to lay the egg and they usually pick species that have smaller eggs! Some of the bird hosts recognize the egg as unwelcome and will get rid of it or abandon the nest, but many do not and raise the baby cowbird as their own; this can sometimes be detrimental to the host's own fledgelings. Only 3 percent of cowbirds are fledged- successfully. Curious. I wonder if the diet for the young cowbird is of no consequence or are all baby birds fed an identical diet. Update.. at least two have fledged from the nest, just got a quick look so as not to disturb, not sure if one was the cowbird. By the way.. have learned that the chipping sparrow nest (which this was) is the most frequently parasitized nest.

We usually leave a wide berth around a bush that we know has a bird nest in it until the birds have fledged, but this nest seems to have been abandoned long before this picture for some reason. The nest had all manner of insects in it it and litter such as green berries that had fallen in. There is a Peterson field guide to bird nests don’t you know, but we were unable to identify, positively, the eggs in this nest It is only about 4-6 inches off the ground, and is lined with pine needles There are a few pines on the farm but not real close to the berries. I thought it looked very similar to the Rose- breasted Grosbeak, but the nest is too low to the ground. I even have a hard time trying to discern whether the eggs are splashed, blotched, dotted, spotted, overlaid or wreathed! There is a chance that they are Rufous- sided Towhee eggs, but these eggs look more heavily marked, and Dark-eyed Junco is a possibility but their nests are usually on the ground and the description does not mention pine needles in the nest. Oh well. We can usually identify the eggs by the panicked parent birds that get in a tizzy when you get too close. It will remain a mystery as to what kind of beautiful eggs these are and what happened to the parents.

Spending lots of time in the berries, weeding, mulching and fertilizing, scything and mowing, fretting and planning, all under the watchful eye of the seemingly lonely, lovely Fiona.

The Asian dogwood Cornus Kousa “Satomi” tis billed as pink but in reality, on our tree, it’s speckled dark pink on the sunny side of the tree and barely pink on the shady side. It blooms much later than the native dogwood, which is very nice. The fall fruit is edible, subtlety sweet and is loved by birds. I’ve wondered about mixing them with other fruit to preserve and I’ve read that you can make wine out of the fruit. Is there anything you can’t make wine out of? We just enjoy a few of them fresh though, competing with the birds for a week or so.